Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(7)
Author: C.D. Reiss

“On that note—“ Darren tossed his bottle in the recycling. “This city’s bouncing with parties in honor of National Day After Thanksgiving Day, and I’m being dragged to the g*y half of them.”

“Hey, wait!” Kevin said. “You guys have to sign the copyright papers.” He ran inside, and he came back out again as if they’d been right by the door. After setting a stack of papers on the crapped out old bar he’d salvaged from an empty lot, he handed Darren a pen. “Right here.”

“Dude, you got me signing papers by candlelight.” Darren put his face nose-close to the page, and Kevin laughed. Darren signed. I got up and did the same. I felt as though we were sealing a deal, probably because I was half tipsy, and the outdoor space, candlelit and cool, added a coat of profundity to the proceeding.

“To us—,” Kevin held his beer aloft. “The Nameless Threesome.” We clicked bottles to our collaborative name. We were a cooperative, the future of creation, the new trend in authorship. Collaborators. Teams. Kevin had seen the trend and made sure he was a part of it. Kevin was a visionary, even to the detriment of his own ego.

It had been fun. More fun than I’d anticipated, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel anxious and alone.

When Darren left, Kevin held up his bottle. “Another?”

“I have to be at work at nine-thirty.”

He handed me another anyway. “This is a small show, but it was a good idea. I’m glad we did this.”

“Yeah. It was good. And I’ve never been that far north.”

“You’re smart, Monica, and you get it. You get what it is to make art I’ve been meaning to say something to you.”

“You’re not going to get maudlin on me, are you?” I leaned my elbows on the bar behind me, bottle dangling from one hand. The beer was going to my head.

“I was wrong. The way I treated you. Calling you Tweety Bird. Marginalizing you. I denied the world your beauty, and it was wrong to you and the world.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb. I was slow to react, and if I was being honest with myself, the human contact felt nice. He leaned in, his nose close to my cheek, and I caught his malt and chocolate smell. “You were right to leave.”

“Kevin, I—”

He put his full lips to mine, and my body responded by twisting. He held me. His tongue tasted of beer. I pushed him away.

“I can’t.”

“Why?” His face found my neck. I recoiled, hating that I was so hungry to be touched but only by one person.

“I’m in love with someone. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

He clamped both sides of my face. “I’ll live with it.”

When he went to kiss me again, I scrunched up my eyes and lips, shaking my head. He held me fast. I did not like it. The sweetness of being touched was gone, replaced by a feeling of violation, like control of my body was being taken from me. I panicked.

“Kevin, no!”

“Do you need a safeword?”

“What?” When I tried to pull away, he clamped his arms around me and shoved his knee between my legs, spreading them.

“Monica,” he said with effort as I wiggled. “Calm down. What’s the—”

I bit his shoulder, hard. He screamed, and when he pulled away, my teeth still had him. Skin broke. Blood soaked through his shirt. Faster than an insult, I felt a hard impact on my face, and I lost my bearings from the slap.

He wore an expression both shocked and ferocious. I swung a full bottle of beer at it. The bottle didn’t break, but it hit his temple with a thok. I lost my grip, and inertia pulled the bottle out of my hand and onto the ground. It landed at my feet in a sunburst of suds.

Kevin was crouched, holding his bleeding head. I didn’t know whether to help him or run away. I was shocked into inaction until he came at me. Then I ran.

I ran into the studio, through the kitchen and his workroom, past the installation in its finished form, down the hall, and out the door. When I got to the front, where my car was parked, the metal front door didn’t slam right away. He was right behind me, his gorgeous face smeared with blood.

“Kevin. Stop!”

He didn’t stop. He grabbed my arm and threw me against my Honda.

Fuck.

My keys were in the studio.

I swung. He ducked. I had my opening. I ran down the block and didn’t stop until I heard music.

CHAPTER 6.

MONICA

Like any self-respecting Angelino, I kept my phone in my pocket. The party I’d found was hopping with kegs and disorganized bottles on a paper-covered table. Art covered the warehouse walls, some of the silkscreens tilted from encounters with drunken partiers.

I called work when I found a quiet corner..

“Hi, Debbie? I can’t make it tonight. Something happened.”

“What’s ‘something’?”

“It’s personal.”

“If you’re screwing my girls over, I get to know why.”

I didn’t want to go through the whole thing. I’d already shown my manager enough unprofessional behavior. “I left my car keys behind a locked door. I’m trying to get my roommate on the phone, but he’s not picking up. I don’t think he’ll get here in time to get me to work.”

She sighed and covered the phone to talk to one of the staff. “Where are you? I’ll send Robert.”

Shit. I could feel my face throbbing where Kevin had hit me. I couldn’t go to work like that. “No, Debbie. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell the whole thing. I was in a fight. I’m not presentable.”

“Stop arguing and text me where you are.”

She hung up.

My face was throbbing with the bump of the music. The warehouse space had been coopted for the night by German Benefactors, an artist’s cooperative just starting to make waves. The place was huge, and packed, and smelling of piss where it was dark. Though two outstanding DJs had been hired, no one had thought to bring in a Port-a-Potty.

So I was forced out into the light, clutching some reddish drink, putting the cold plastic up to my face, avoiding people I might know.

Which didn’t work. Ute Graden, a struggling actress of German descent with naturally white hair, found me sitting on a cinderblock wall by the street, watching my phone and the road for Robert. She and her four friends milled around, sipping, laughing, and talking about their work and dreams. They were part of my crowd. My world, and I felt so out of it.

Ute and I made small talk about our careers, where I mentioned nothing about a song I had to pull from Carnival because I’d promised my ex-lover I would.