Something about the encounter with Officer Cocksuck didn't sit well with me. I very well may have ended her marriage, and that was the first time I had dragged someone I didn't even fuck into things. The selfies I made her send to her friend and eventually her husband had been hot as hell, but some tiny grain of a conscious grew on that and worked its way under my skin. In the months that followed, and only to avoid that guilt again, I tried to stop using the power so much. Encounters with strange women took a decline in frequency and franticness. I typically knew their names after I fucked them, and in time even before.
My liberal arts degree finally got me a job. It even came with a little plastic badge stamped with my name and keys to the mall. Night security was pretty alright. Once an hour half of our two-man crew had to patrol the lot. When they were done, the other left his station at the monitors and did a walkthrough of the interior, mostly just to stave off falling asleep. Most of the guys I worked with were still in college, and I got to posture myself as The Man That Had Actually Graduated. Things like that kept my ego satiated when I wasn't feeding it women whole.
One night, the last in a long line of failed bookstores was holding inventory. Out in the lot on my patrol, I saw her smoking on the loading dock. I pulled in just to make sure it was one of the employees, and not someone I had to call the cops on.
Her name was Rene, and she was lovely.
It took everything I had to get her phone number without asking. In honesty, I don't even recall how it happened anymore, but I was positive I hadn't used my kooky-brain-powers on her. It went that way for a while too. We went on dates just like normal people, and I remained confident I hadn't muddled her mind. Eventually I came to be sleeping at her house more often than my dad's, and then I didn't stay at his house at all.
It worked for months, and it felt good. She wanted to be with me because of me, and not because I told her to be with me. I loved her. She was all I wanted to wake up to in the morning and go to bed with at night with.
One day, I started to doubt it all though. It was a simple and calm disagreement about who got to be on top that night. The argument ended when she said a single word in a cold tone. "Okay." The gut punch of that word forced the idea that I could be a normal person out of me like stale air from my lungs. She came to say the word more and more. The relationship weighed on me like the lead vest at the dentist. I loved her, and inadvertently I was blotting her out of existence.
I couldn't stay with her any longer; I couldn't take watching what I was doing. My father took me back in again, and my stepmother begrudgingly agreed. Last time I had stayed there for any length of time it was right after my graduation, and they had been on an extended vacation. Now though they were home.
Since their return I had seen them only a few times. My stepmother, Gwen, was unpleasant enough that avoiding them was worthwhile. Adding to that was the awkwardness that came with seeing Tammy at family functions. When I called my dad he was out of town on business, but assured me that I could move back into the house. He said the room I stayed in last time had been converted to an office for Gwen's real estate business, but that I would be welcome to stay in Tammy's room.
Gwen greeted me while I was still in the driveway. "You just had to fuck up again?" That scowl must have been chiseled directly into her skull, she never went without it. I didn't know Tammy's father, but I'm guessing she inherited a lot from him. The only physical aspects Gwen seemed to share with her daughter was the lower half. She kept in shape, and like Tammy, her legs were long, tanned, and would have looked at home on an anatomy study in marble. That day in the driveway she was wearing her tennis whites, and it may as well have been her twenty-year-old daughter's legs being shown off. In contrast to Tammy, she actually filled out the top pretty nicely too. Those may have been purchased though. Hell, as a real estate agent, they may have even been a business expense.
I lifted my only bag out of the back seat and said, "I guess I did." I slanted a half smile at her. It didn't change her expression.
"Listen you little shit," she shook her racket bag at me to punctuate, "You are out of here in one damn month this time."
I shrugged at her, and walked past toward the door.
"That's four weeks."
"I know that's four weeks, Gwen." I opened the door and stepped inside.
"Do you?" The scowl was enshrouded in the façade of a mean smile. Unlike Tammy, her face was actually kind of pleasant if you could ignore the ugliness coming out of her mouth. "We put you through freshman math 6 times. I was starting to think you couldn't count."
"And eventually I passed." I closed the door between us. There was no part of me that wanted to be staying there again. Futile attempts at a normal life had fallen apart under me without even knowing it. Gwen's efforts to shame me for returning were nothing compared to the shame already in action inside of me.
Normal was all I wanted to be, and it had become clear that I never could be.
In the refrigerator there were two apples, a jar of mayonnaise, a bag salad, and a box of Franzia zinfandel. I poured myself a tall plastic tumbler of wine, and walked to my room. It wasn't my room anymore, I had forgotten. The office was as plain as plain could be. There was a 5-in-1 printer, a calendar, and Gwen's laptop.
Tammy's room was further down on the left. Nothing in it was actually pink, but somehow it all managed to have that tint about it. The closet was still full of her clothes, as was the dresser. In the top drawer, there was the very bikini I had choked her out with. A smile crept on my face. I had maybe found the one fond memory that house held for me.
On the bed I thought about Rene, and Officer Cocksuck. Linda's niece made a short appearance in my mind. I took a long drink of the wine. Things started to coalesce in my brain. When it came together into half an idea I nearly ran to my old room.
It was right there on Gwen's calendar, the Saturday before my dad got back, written in red sharpie. My way out. "Freymont Condominium Open House."
I grinned down at the tumbler of wine and we went to bed together.
Sure that Gwen's laptop was somehow guarded by her malice deeply enough that she would know I was touching it (I imagined her dropping her racket mid-swing, and shouting my name to the heavens) I went about finding details for the open house online using my phone. Freymont Condominiums was a renovated factory, 22 units, and all of them were vacant and for sale. My stepmom was the selling agent for the whole complex. It was expressly adult living, no kids would be living there, and that made it perfect for my plan.
That Saturday I leaned on the hood of my Toyota, baking in the Arizona sun outside of the Freymont Condominiums. The listing had done it justice. It was a lovely old building. In any part of the country trendier than Phoenix it would have been repurposed into art lofts decades ago. In the rearview I made sight of Gwen pulling up in her SUV. She was wearing a pale peach skirt with a matching blazer, and a plain white blouse. I got up to meet her on the sidewalk outside.
"Gwen, hi." From the other side of the building I waved.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I wanted to talk to you some about the house."
Instead of the racket bag, she shook her briefcase at me. "We can do that AT the house." She sneered at me. "This is not the time or the place, Mike."
I made like I didn't understand what she meant, and said, "You should have worn something lower cut."
Her face flashed disgust, and her hand covered her already covered cleavage.
"I don't think it would hurt your chances at a couple sales today to unbutton that blouse some. Would you like to do that?"
