love sick

Love Sick
By Robert D’Esposito


“Safeway card?” the cashier asked as Todd handed her $15.00 dollars and insisted, “Here, keep the change.” He began to run as he exited the store but the movement threatened to damage the flowers so he slowed to a fast walk. “Fucking claim review!” he thought as he tried to admire the $12.50 arrangement for which he had just over-payed.

The cell phone began to vibrate in Todd’s pocket as the otherworldly, digital beeping caught him unaware. He looked at the screen for a long moment and then pressed the green button, “Hey.”
“Hey you,” a woman’s voice responded.
“What’s up, Tara?”
“Oh, I’m fine, how was your day?” Tara asked.
Todd chuckled and responded, “I’m sorry. Look, I’m just in a rush right now,” he explained as he continued his speedy walk.
“I wanted to see if you were gonna be around this weekend.”
“Actually, I am kinda booked this weekend,” Todd said.
“Kinda or totally?” Tara asked.
“Totally…”
“How about late tonight or Saturday? I was just shopping at Victoria’s Secret and I bought something special…”
“Really? I wish I could but I can’t, really. During the week or next weekend…”
“Maybe. We’ll see. I might be busy,” she responded.
“Tara, look… let’s just talk mid-week,” he tried to wrap it up.
“You suck.”
“I know. But I have a friend coming in to town.”
“Oh.” She responded, paused a moment and continued, “I still have bruises from Tuesday. I have a big purple welt on my chest…”
“I’d like to see that, but…”
“It’ll probably be all gone by Sunday,” she continued.
“Then we can make new ones. Ok?”
“We’ll see. I might be going to Vancouver, BC next week.”
“I’ll call you.” He pressed the “end call” button.

The train rolled slowly into the station. “Airport; please remain seated until the train has come to a complete stop,” the automated, she-robot voice insisted. Todd rose, nonetheless and stood impatiently before the sliding doors.

Todd had intended to be early, to pick up the rental car and have it waiting with their song cued on the CD player. He intended to go home and shower, put a little grease in his hair and spray a light mist of cologne on the back of his neck. He had a special shirt laid out on his freshly made bed: a red and white western style button down that would go well with his new blue jeans.

The train halted and the doors stood motionless for an eternity while Todd took off his striped tie, folded it and put it in the back pocket of his sweaty khakis. “Fucking audit,” he complained to himself. “Fucking bullshit financial notes,” he continued and leapt through the opening doors, onto the platform toward the escalator leading to the baggage claim.

Across the cavernous room Lorna’s strawberry blonde pig tails had the purple tinge of a fresh corpse underneath the fluorescent lights. Todd hid the cheap bouquet behind his back rapidly walking toward the crowd assembled around the conveyer belt.

Todd put his free hand over her eyes from behind. “Guess who?” he asked. “Maury Povich!” she turned and grabbed him tightly, around his waist. “Look,” Todd started, “I got you these. I would’ve gotten better ones but…”
“These are perfect,” she assured him, “now stand up straight so I can get a good look at you.”

They got into the late model, dark blue Kia Rio and Todd slipped in a CD. Billy Holiday sang, “Summertime, and the living’s easy...” “You,” Lorna smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Your daddy’s rich and your ma’s good looking…” he crooned to her.

At Todd’s studio apartment a bottle of Maker’s Mark sat beside a pile of hastily stacked bills and advertisements on the kitchen table. “Sorry, I couldn’t get some better whiskey. This is probably a bit pedestrian for the crowd at U Penn…” he began to explain but Lorna cut him off, “are you kidding? We are lucky to drink Old Crow outta paper cups in the graduate dorms on Friday nights; c’mon, it hasn’t been that long since you were a student.”
“It feels like forever ago…” he said.
“It’s been five months,” she assured him.

Todd poured two cocktails into mismatched coffee cups: one neat, the other with soda and an ice cube. “MPC: Medical Products Corporation,” she read the side of the mug. “Work,” he explained.
“Did you miss me?” she inquired in a girlish way.
“Like I miss the bus every morning, Chicken.”
“Chicken,” she smiled and took his hand, “you haven’t called me that in ages,” she reminisced.
“Probably, five months,” he quipped.
“More,” she corrected him, “you stopped calling me ‘Chicken’ well before graduation.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“It’s aright,” she continued, “relationships change; you were my best friend.”
“After three years, I would hope so.”
“I guess we were more than best friends,” she grinned.
“Damn right, Chicky,” he said as he put his hand on her cheek, “come over here.”
The two began to kiss, but he stopped, “there is something I should tell you…”
“Shut up,” she insisted and began unbuttoning his cornflower blue oxford shirt.

The sun shined through the window onto Todd’s face. He put the pillow over his head and turned onto his side. Then he remembered Lorna; he felt for her, fruitlessly through the sheets of the double bed. “Was it a dream?” he wondered when he heard the shower begin to run in the bathroom. “Lorna?” he yelled across the room.
“I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you missed me,” she responded from the bathroom.
“Why? What are you taking about?” he inquired.
“I will show you when I get out of the shower.”
“Show me what?”
“I look like I just spent the night in jail,” she explained, “I have huge bruises…”
“Let me see,” he insisted.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Lemme see,” he repeated.

Lorna emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her exposed cleavage covered in deep red hickeys which matched the dozen bites and bruises across her chest and arms. “Look at this, you can see the fingers…” she complained.
“Yikes, I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“You are an absolute brute,” she reprimanded him as she dropped the towel and crawled up from the foot of the bed, “an animal,” she continued as she climbed on top of him.
………………………..

The little square of red light flashed on the face of Todd’s cell phone. He flipped it open and read the text: “Tara: ditch your company, let’s fuck.” He flipped the phone shut and flushed the urinal in the filthy gas station bathroom.

“Do you know where we are, retard?” Lorna yelled out the window of the Kia.
“Chicky,” Todd responded as he shut the bathroom door, “how dare you.”
“You don’t know where we are.”
“Babygirl,” he shook his head, “I can’t believe what I’m hearin’.”
“Because you aren’t infamous for your absolute lack of direction,” she unfolded the giant map she had just purchased.
“Moi?” he turned the key in the ignition.
“What train will take you to the empire state building?” she tested him.
“The W… I don’t remember. It has been a minute since I’ve been…”
“You fucking interned two summers around the block from the Empire State Building.”
“I did?” he smiled.
“We had sex in the bathroom of the Au-Bon pain in the Empire State Building.”
“That’s right and now you’re gonna suck me off right here in wherever-the-hell-we-are, Oregon.” He commanded.
“Oh, yeah?” she questioned.
He settled the car into fifth gear and grabbed her wrist and twisted. She punched him in the chest and he squeezed.
“Alright,” she conceded, “just don’t fucking kill us when you cum.”
“You should be so lucky,” he countered.

At dusk the dark blue Kia pulled into the Shilo Inn at Newport, Oregon. Todd emptied the car while Lorna showered. “Let’s get dressed for dinner,” she suggested. The Italian waiter brought the couple whiskey cocktails in the restaurant overlooking the empty beach.

“You look ridiculously beautiful, Chicken Scratch,” he lifted her hand and kissed it softly.
“I wanted to wear my hair up,” she explained, “but I couldn’t because of somebody.”
“You look gorgeous, baby doll, just the way you are right now,” he assured her.
“Really?”
“Um-huh,” he replied.
“Well, I have finger imprints on the back of my neck, how am I supposed to explain that?”
“To whom need you explain?” he inquired.
“Are you ready,” the waiter asked in broken English.
“I think, I am,” Todd looked at Lorna.
“You go, honey, I’ll know in a minute – there are only two veggie dishes on the menu anyway…”
“I am having the steak, rare … bleeding,” Todd ordered.
“Excellent choice, signor,” the waiter said.
“Todd? I had no idea. I figured we would share…”
“I’ll have some of yours,” he told her.
“What’s better: the wild mushroom risotto or the capalini with marinara?” she asked the waiter.
“The risotto is excellent, signora.”
“Get the Talapia with linguine,” Todd instructed her.
“You know I don’t eat fish…”
“She’ll have the Talapia,” Todd assured the waiter.
“Todd!”
“C’mon, you’re on vacation; you eat fish,” he squeezed her hand under the table.
The waiter looked at her; she nodded.
“I think you’re gonna like the Talapia,” he assured her.
The waiter left the table and the two sat for a moment in silence. Lorna looked at Todd for a moment and he lifted his glass and smiled. She rolled her eyes as she lowered her gaze. He squeezed her knee and she squirmed as she tried to conceal a reluctant smile, “stop, you know how that tickles me.”
“How come there was no Talapia when I was a kid?” she continued.
“What do you mean?”
“Do ever remember seeing Talapia when you were little?”
“No, I don’t think so; cod, flounder, salmon, tuna, of course…”
“Its like they just discovered it five years ago or something,” she laughed and took a big gulp from her cocktail.

Lorna held Todd around the waist as they walked along the beach in the moonlight, but it soon began to mist.
“Fuckin, rain,” Todd complained, “Let’s go, Chickaroo.”
Lorna grabbed his wrist, “lets just go down by the water first,” she insisted and pulled his arm.
“No, its raining, Lor, let’s go up to the room and have a night cap and watch Saturday Night Live.”
“Is that show still on?” she handed him a flask, “here’s a nightcap, lush.”
He took a long swig and started toward the hotel.
“Well, I am going with or without you,” Lorna warned.
“You better not!”

Lorna began to run toward the coastline but Todd gave chase, overcame her and threw her onto the sand. Kneeling over her he pulled a steak knife out of his pocket and without a word put it to her neck. She grabbed him tightly and they started tonguing. He lowered the knife from her throat, placing it at the top of her neat mound of pubic hair and pressed the jagged end into her belly and scraped it down leaving a long, thin bloody trail.
…………………

The Rio sped along the cliffs in the gray rain toward the Sea Lion Cave in Florence. “Wait till you see the cave, Chicken, it’s amazing and horrible…”
“Horrible?”
“The sea lions are horrible, they have the worst existence imaginable: these soft blobs lying on these jagged rocks getting splashed with cold water all day,”
“Maybe they don’t mind it…”
“Oh, you’ll see – they are miserable creatures; completely pissed off.”
“When did you get into all this?” Lorna inquired.
“All what? Sea Lions? I’m not, I’ve just been to the cave…”
“This,” she reached into her tote and pulled out a white Interpol t-shirt; she stretched out a blood stained portion in front of him.
“Oh, that. When did YOU?” he countered.
“I’m not,” she began but corrected herself, “I mean I didn’t know I was.”
“Aren’t you? You certainly seem to be.”
“Its kinda fun; it’s a little scary,”
“For me, too,” he grinned.
“Really?”
“I was nervous on Friday night,”
“You didn’t seem nervous,”
“Concealed by the whiskey, I guess. I didn’t know if you were gonna be into it.”|
“I didn’t think I would, either, or I just never really considered it,” she looked contemplatively out the window and suddenly grabbed his arm, “pull over, let’s walk along that cliff.”

The Rio pulled off onto the side of the road and Lorna and Todd began to climb a small cliff that sat over the Pacific Ocean. “So you never said: how did you get into it?” Lorna insisted.
“Do you really wanna know?”
“Yeah, I do, I mean we each have or own lives now, and we should be able to talk about them, I mean your probably seeing people, I’m seeing someone else, its shouldn’t be that bigga deal…”
“Who are you seeing?”
“It’s no one, really,” she explained.
“No, it’s like you said: we can talk about this stuff,” he insisted.
“He’s just some guy,”
“He goes to your school?”
“No, no. He goes to Columbia Law, so we rarely see each other, really.”
“Hmmm; Columbia Law,” he repeated her almost to himself and continued, “What’s his name?” Todd asked.
“No, it’s your turn: when did you learn that you were a dominant?” Lorna asked.
“A dominant? I just like to mess around, I’m not like registered with any clubs or anything…”
“You know what I mean,” she continued.
“I met this kinda crazy chick at a bar one night,” he began.
“Do you still see her?”
“Lorna…”
“No tell me, I wanna know, what does she like, tell me,” she slid her fingers slowly across the front of his jeans, “does she like to be tied up?”
“She likes when I grab her by the neck.”
“Show me.”
He put his hands around her neck, she slackened her body and exhaled, “does she like you to shake her, like a rag doll, by the neck?”
Todd began to shake her.
“Does she like to get on her knees when she sucks your dick? Does she like for you to fuck her from behind?” she asked excitedly.
He tightened his grip on her neck, held her still and looked coldly into her eyes. “No, is that how Columbia Law likes it?” he asked as he pushed her off the edge of the cliff; her head smashing open against the rocky ground below.

Todd put his glasses on and squinted at the rocky ground below. Due to the formation of the cliff (the peak stood above an indentation in the rock wall) he couldn’t see the body which had fallen inward, except for one twisted shoeless foot; sock covered in a splash of blood.

Todd surveyed the rock wall and hastily chose a path downward. He took the edge where the he would only have a slight inward angle to traverse in order to get to a flat spot from which he could jump the last 10 or 11 feet. He let himself fall, as his pocket began to vibrate and the otherworldly, digital beeping caught him unaware. He hit the ledge and stumbled, falling down onto the rocks a few yards from Lorna’s body.

Todd excitedly attempted to rise but a stinging sensation ran through his right leg. He looked down and saw that his femur was severed and sticking through his jeans. His cell phone continued to ring but it was out of reach. Soon the tide claimed it as the cold waves splashed over and eventually covered Todd’s immobile body.