THE UNSAYABLE, Part One
Michael was still worked up after his display of histrionics. Even under the best circumstances it was extremely difficult for him to transition out of his obsessive behaviors, especially where he was required to put on a “social face” in the next act. What distinguished many of Michael’s behaviors from those of others were not the behaviors themselves. Anyone could claim an acquaintance with feeling self-conscious, unsociable, or obsessive from time to time. An occasional behavior however is not the same as a pervasive behavior. Where one is an anecdote of shared experience, the other continuously disrupts or prevents a normal life. Where one may be a phase, the other is so integral a part of one’s being that it requires lifelong coping mechanisms to either conceal or justify the behavior.
More unique to Michael was his proclivity to runaway paranoia. From bouts of hypochondria, where he would convince himself he had skin cancer or diabetes, to reverse engineering subtle plots against him, dark ideas overtook his logic-chopping reason for short periods of time. A prevailing sense of catastrophe, of being watched, of having his body or property violated by natural or nefarious means—these concerns were never far from his mind. Whether washing his hands to elude germs or crossing the street to avoid strangers, the world—his world—imparted little sense of security. What prevented him from being schizophrenic was he completely comprehended his irrationality of emotion and thought as they occurred, yet was powerless to set them aside. Here too he was forced to second-guess his suspicions about his new situation, although it had been Omar who raised the specter of surveillance and plots.
Amber
told him she was in The Honeymoon Suite, but it was
only in gazing up at a long row of motel doors the visitor remembered
all the rooms bore that name. On entering the front office he was accosted
by a bank of muted TV monitors over the counter; all (save one) chronicled the exploits of lovers in the various rooms.
A wiry, dandruff-speckled man emerged out of a back room finishing up a dripping taco. “No vacancies,” he announced.
“I’m supposed to meet someone. Someone who has a room.”
The desk clerk scowled. “Can’t give out that information.”
The rebuffed man glanced at the only monitor with a dark screen. “No vacancies?” he repeated.
“No vacancies.”
Rain beaded on the oil-slicked blacktop outside, reflecting the glowing sign that dominated the roof. Michael navigated the mud flaps of oversized pickup trucks to follow the constellation to the rod-iron stairs with peeling paint. Once on the second level, he walked down to the door at the far end. It was ajar; darkness in the crack confirmed his hunch.
“Amber…?” Her name dropped over the threshold to a mottled carpet, yet garnered no reply. He traced the shining seam of neon up to a table lamp.
“Leave it,” came her hushed command from somewhere in the room.
“Don’t you want me to see you?”
“Precaution.”Her finger lifted, breaking from the larger shadow. “That’s another precaution.”
Michael looked to where she pointed; a pillowcase covered the mounted video camera in the corner.
Her slink placed her at the edge of the bed. “Like I said. I work for an agency. They wouldn’t appreciate me being here on their clock.”
The man puzzled at the cloak-and-dagger.
“Sit,” she said, patting the disconcertingly small mattress. Her calm tone halved the remaining shadow between them. “If we’re going to talk, we both need to be comfortable.”
He waded out of a muddle. “I can’t be comfortable.”
“You can’t be comfortable with me, you mean.”
“I mean I can’t be comfortable with people... in general.”
“Why?”
Michael turned to the nightstand, and then to the window. By the time he turned back, he was pacing. “Most people say too little for me to abide,” he blurted, “and in a take-or-leave situation, I can leave them all.”
“Is this a ‘leave’ situation?”
“No,” he said.
“Then what do you need others to tell you?”
He did not hesitate. “I need others to hide nothing from me.”
She turned it back on him. “Do you always speak candidly?”
“I don’t manipulate people.”
“But do you manipulate yourself?”
He stopped dead in his tracks.
“Sit,” she repeated.
He acquiesced in his clumsy way.
She took his hand with a caress. “Why did you call without leaving a message?”
“I never think through why I do anything. I only second-guess myself afterwards.”
“You are always honest,” she observed. “Whether you speak your mind or not, you wear your true feelings for all to see.”
He averted his gaze, thinking she could somehow read it in the dark.
“Is all this to do with the girl who is not your girlfriend?”
Michael spoke frankly. “I’ve chosen unwisely.”
“Unwisely? How?”
He explained, “All my life I’ve been in love with an ideal. As I’ve grown older, I guess I've never paid attention that my ideal hasn’t changed while I have. It is with this girl I see the emerging gap.”
“Then your ideal has to evolve, too.”
“I suppose. If it’s even possible.”
“I think it’s very possible.”
He mulled over the optimism.
Amber stood up, latching onto the bends of his knees. “You need to relax.” She stretched him out on the bed, even as he continued to tense. His shoes were removed, whereupon the masseuse turned her attention to his socked feet. He was quickly swimming against the current—against her.
“Why did you drop out of art school, Amber?”
“To be brutally honest,” she confessed, “I enjoyed sex more than studying.”
Darkness only went so far in erecting a curtain between their thoughts.
“You have that look,” she observed. “A look that would like to reform me.”
“Your life is your own.”
“But you disapprove.” Amber, seizing the moment, crawled up to straddle his waist in her stilettos, allowing her full weight sink into his pelvis. “You disapprove because you’re attracted to me.”
Her foreshortened thighs widened where they compressed and pushed against his sides. The feel was one of warm lapping water seeping out of scratchy nylon. “You’re an attractive woman,” he began. “And smart...”
“And…?”
Bulbous knees, darkened in outline under her fishnet, appeared cartoony and exaggerated below his chin. “And...” he continued less confidently, “I would wish more for you.”
“Which would be what?”
“I can hardly say.”
Her vice tightened at his waist, recalibrating. “You can blame my stepfather for the way I turned out.”
“Your stepfather?”
“He was my first lover.”
Michael’s body now resembled barbed wire. “And you’ve dedicated your life to chasing after him in bed?”
She grinned at his show of emotion. “I do have a thing for older men.”
“That can’t be good,” he said.
“Older men?”
“No.” He amended the remark. “The part about you chasing after your stepfather in bed.”
“We need what we need.”
“I don’t judge you. I judge him.”
“And so you should. He was a beastly man, apart from being good in the sack.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Not sure.”
“So you have nothing to do with him?”
“He got me pregnant when I was still a teen. After that, I moved in with an aunt and never saw him again.”
“Is this the child you mentioned in Chicago?”
She dissembled. “This is not the child I want to talk about.” The stage scenery shifted around with her weight, but his submissive posture left him little leverage. “What was your relationship like with your mother when you were younger, Michael?”
His face flattened on the pillow. “So I’m back on the shrink’s couch?”
Undeterred, she pressed. “When you think of yourself as a little boy, what impression do you remember most strongly of her?”
“Define ‘impression’?”
“Do you think of being in her arms?”
“I have no recollections of that sort. I didn’t like being touched as a child.”
“Do you have recollections of her punishing you?”
“Most children are spanked by their mothers.”
“So you do recall those occasions?”
“I don’t understand the point of this.”
“That’s why you’re an ass man,” she declared.
“What?”
“The way you we’re looking at me in the hotel hallway in Chicago.”
“But what does a woman’s anatomy have to do with my mother whipping me as a child?”
Amber laid out her theory. “When you were a tyke, all you saw of your mother from the floor were her hips and ass, which some part of you naturally wanted to cling to. Perhaps your mother did not force affection on you, but she did physically interact with you when she punished you. Thus, your contact with female anatomy has largely been an unpleasant one.”
“And you get all this from a glance at your backside and one night of pillow talk?”
She continued, “Just as a child acquires immunities through his mother’s milk, a mother’s arms impart other forms of armor. Boys who spend a lot of time in their mother’s arms tend to be boob men, and generally have fewer phobias. Such as a fear of heights.”
“Did Omar tell you about that?”
Amber expounded, “You’re a bottom-dweller, you see. Always looking up at a heaven you can’t touch.”
Michael was stuck to refute what she was saying.
The prostitute stroked his still-youthful face. “Would you like to be my little backdoor man?”
He blushed. “I could never afford you, Amber.”
“But you’re not a client.” She was miles ahead. “We could meet at this motel on a regular basis, if you want? Sort of halfway between Chicago and Stonesthrow.”
Even allowing for the dimness, it was clear nothing lay under Amber’s short skirt but garters and smooth, clean-shaven skin. He fidgeted, agitating aromatics on her skin. “Sex has never been the beginning of anything for me,” he proclaimed.
She laid a finger to his lips and, in complete candor, said, “But if we start sleeping together—keep sleeping together—sooner or later, it will be a beginning to something.”
He contemplated other challenges, but her pressing weight elicited an involuntary and unambiguous reaction from him; Amber surely felt it. One side of her mouth entertained the idea of a smile, but it was her finger that decisively acted on the cue. It easily penetrated his lips, where the polished nail scraped against a bicuspid before the thick of the finger plunged down to make a furrow in his tongue. The gesture triggered the desired sucking reflex, and as his mouth yielded to the temptation, his other bodily reflex took encouragement from it. The practiced woman slid forward, yet the feel of her hosiery against the teeth of his zipper was more molecular than mental.
Michael pushed against her knees, prompting her to release him from the nylon net. He rose against the headboard to buttress himself.
The prostitute leaned back, even as her gaze penetrated deeper. “I’m hiding nothing from you, Michael. I’m speaking my heart. Isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this what you need to be comfortable?”
What he was uncomfortable with was the abruptness of her proposition. He could not fathom her eagerness to sleep with him, or her forthrightness in confessing it. Never in his life had a woman’s words and actions matched so perfectly. Regardless, the dark trappings of the lure kept him wary and distrustful.
Chapter Nineteen. Section Two/ Back/ Contents Page
Copyright © 2007 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.