Push(60)

David is grinning at me. No, he’s laughing at me, and my face starts to feel the heat of my own embarrassment. I am blushing, and he likes it.

“Go, take your piss,” he says, after a beat. “Then, come find me. I’ll see your flying fuck and raise you an indescribable benefit.”

When I come out of the bathroom, David is sitting at the card table with Carl and a few other men. He has a stack of chips in front of him, and I get the feeling he is about to kick Carl’s ass. He looks at me as I walk over to the table. Carl hands me another drink.

David motions for me to bend down so he can tell me something. In a whisper he says, “I’m going to score one of those benefits for you right now, Emma. Whatever you want.”

I shift my head so that my mouth brushes against his ear. “All I want is for you to give a flying fuck about me, too,” I murmur. I look straight ahead. I don’t want to see David’s face for fear he might be snarking at my drunken declaration.

But instead of laugher I hear, “Already done.” And I feel myself tighten inside.

“I’m glad to see you two found each other,” Carl says loudly. “You’re quite the pair.” His eyes move up and down my body before falling on David’s face with a scandalous grin.

“Fuck you, Carl,” David spits. “Keep your mouth shut and play.”

“Rent’s due the first of every month, sweetie,” Carl says to me. “Don’t forget. I wouldn’t want to have to kick you out.” It feels like a threat.

“Screw you, Carl,” I tease, not believing this is the same man I was flirting and laughing with a few minutes before.

David looks up at me, and even with my glazed eyes, I can see that he is pleased.

For the next hour, they play. And I drink. The rest of the room slowly clears out, and before I know it, our table is the only one left. Even Matt and his friends have disappeared. Despite the fact that I don’t know a thing about poker, I know that David is winning and Carl is frustrated as hell. He is no longer laughing and teasing and telling stories. Instead he is swearing and scowling and making cracks about what a shitty maintenance man David is. David is just soaking it all in. It must be par for the course on Tuesday nights. But it is all getting too serious for me. I want to push Carl’s face into the table, to smack him upside the head. To tell him to go fuck himself. I am sinking in anger. Anger fueled by alcohol. And by lust. I want David to put down his cards, punch Carl in the face, then scoop me up and take me home.

But what I get instead is a rush of vertigo. And a second later my hands slide down David’s bird-covered arms, and I am on the floor.





Chapter Twenty-Three

Jenny

I am sitting on this bridge contemplating everything that is right in the world. There is so much that is right. So much that is good. I love this world, I love this man, and I love this city. In the wake of hurricane Katrina so many of my friends left, but I stayed. I’m thankful that I did, because if I had gone, I would never have met David. And I would never have had the opportunity to fall in love with such a strange and exceptional man. David is thoughtful and comforting, and the energy he gives my life is precisely why I can say that I love him more than I have loved anybody. Ever. I need to be with somebody whose control keeps my chaos in check.

David moved to New Orleans a little over a year ago from some small town in Illinois. He grew up there, and when the opportunities ran out, so did he. He had worked for his father’s construction company, and when it went under, David saw it as a sign that it was time to leave. His dad was a drinker, and he got mixed up with their secretary. David said this woman had his dad “by the balls,” and one day she cleared out the company’s bank account and left town. They never found her, or the money, and David’s dad drank himself into a constant stupor. Apparently, his father tried to convince the cops that David was somehow involved, saying that David was sleeping with the secretary, too. But nobody believed him. The secretary was twice David’s age, and when they questioned David about the whole thing, he said he and the deputy nearly laughed their asses off. He didn’t even know the secretary’s last name, he told them. He sure as hell hadn’t slept with her. He told the police that blaming him was his father’s way of trying not to look so goddamned stupid. The whole town knew that David’s dad was a drunk, and his dad had had numerous run-ins with the police over the years. They knew David had nothing to do with stealing that money. Questioning him was nothing more than a formality.

David left Illinois six weeks later because his dad grew more and more belligerent, and then completely lost it when he had to declare bankruptcy. David said he would have offered to help his dad out had he not tried to blame the whole damn fiasco on him. But, as it stood, he saw no reason to bail out his alcoholic father. So instead, he left.