SWNOVELS Enter The Black Oak: Chapter 3
LATER THAT EVENING, I find myself studying the stern faces of my three closest friends in the world as they flick through the images I took with my phone, occasionally lifting their eyes to glance at me or each other in silence.
Stella, Madison and Kevin aren’t exactly wallflowers and seeing them silent like this ties a knot of anxiety inside me. I trust my friends as much as my own family, though that does little to dampen my skin-crawling humiliation as I show them the messages and pictures that unmask the ugly truth about the perfect marriage everyone thought I had. I think back to our big night out a few weeks ago, just before the operation on my ankle, and cringe as I remember gushing teasingly about my god of a husband and our surreal, passionate life together. What a joke that seems now. I have to admit that I also feel an unexpected sense of relief—relief that I’ve actually shared the story without my whole world ending like I suspected it might.
Kevin suddenly gets up from this chair and sits himself next to me on Maddie’s tatty purple couch. As he puts his skinny arm around me and kisses me on the temple, his wiry, rusty-brown hair tickling my face, I try not to allow tears to spill onto my cheek.
“Fucking bastard. I’d like to flay him alive,” he hisses, his words uncharacteristically violent for the live-and-let-live Kevin. “Seriously, I could beat the shit out of him!”
I place a hand on his designer jeans and smile at the idea of my slim, slightly effeminate friend—who is at least five inches shorter and a good thirty pounds lighter than the muscular Jack—squaring up to him, especially in light of how proud Kevin is of his handsome face, designer stubble and expertly coiffed hair, the work of a famous New York barber that every gay man I know raves about. Kevin has seen too many things, had too many out there life experiences to judge other people. Somewhere along the path his life has taken, through the gay-friendly “spas” that he regularly frequents for some “groping action”, as he calls it, or the heterosexual relationships that he has attempted during a short bi-curious phase with women who knew there was a good chance he was gay but adored him so much they were willing to overlook it, he has become extremely tolerant of the whims and foibles of other people. The guy is as far from the cast-the-first-stone type as you can get, which is precisely why it’s so unnerving to see him looking this pissed.
“He’s an arrogant piece of shit!” he snarls, jumping to his feet and lighting up a cigarette which he puffs on furiously, his espresso-colored eyes wild with anger. “I’d like to beat the crap out of that smug prick.”
“Hey, don’t go giving yourself a stroke over him,” I urge. “Or fucking lung cancer.”
I turn to see Stella and Maddie both puffing on cigarettes, visibly fuming in every sense.
“Hey, you two!” I protest. “Let’s put down the death sticks, okay? I won’t be able to tell you anything if you’re gonna light up every time.”
As the words come out, I realize I’ve never wanted a drag more and eye the packet lustfully. I haven’t touched one since the spring my thesis was due just over three years ago, just before I started dating Jack, when through stress, exhaustion and a desperate desire to finish my degree in three years instead of four, I developed an unhealthy caffeine and cigarette habit that took me another six months to kick.
Stella and Maddie have both been casual smokers all the years I’ve known them—Maddie usually when she’s stressed out and Stella mainly as a post-coital indulgence, which does mean that my lady gets through a fair few, I must admit. Like Kevin, Stella has had more than her fair share of non-traditional life experiences, making her very rarely judgmental, but she still looks pale as she scrolls through the catalog of X-rated evidence on my phone.
“No, sweetie,” she says, grabbing the packet off the table, most certainly reading my thoughts of toxic-smoke heaven. “He’s not taking your health away from you as well.”
I raise an eyebrow at her as she puffs away fervently, her ashy-brown pixie cut as messy and wild as she clearly feels tonight.
“Yeah, I know,” she shrugs, taking a feisty drag that would put an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner to shame. “I’ll quit tomorrow.”
“Does Jack know that you know?” asks Maddie, pulling her blond bob off her face and tying it up in a knot at the top off her head.
“No, not yet. I tried to confront him last night, but the words just wouldn’t come out. I don’t know why. I felt so… pathetic.”
“Hey, pathetic is not a word that anyone would use to describe you. You were in shock.”
It’s not the first time Maddie’s sweet words have helped make my world more bearable. We’ve been inseparable since meeting in San Francisco when we were teens. My family moved there for a year for my father’s job and met Maddie’s family during a protest against pipelines. She moved to New York about five years ago and has never wanted to go back since. She’s five years older than me, but I’ve never felt it. Maddie’s one the smartest, funniest, warmest women I’ve ever known, as well as being totally and adorably eccentric. In her jam-packed twenty-nine years, no girl has been on more mortifying dates than this one and yet every relationship she’s ever had has petered out after a few months or downright imploded, with either outcome leading to weeks of crying, smoking, cursing and drinking whiskey while a friend—usually me—consoles her.
Stella, on the other hand, a fiercely independent thirty-year-old with a history of dysfunctional romances, seems to have the same attitude towards long-term relationships that most people have to being sentenced to maximum security prison. Stella doesn’t have boyfriends; she has “friends” or “lovers” or “fuck buddies” or “some guy I fucked” as well as the cell phone numbers of about ten barmen around the city. The fact that she and her polar opposite, Maddie, are friends at all is one of life’s mysteries. Watching them together sometimes sends me into fits of hysterics as Maddie starts planning the wedding bouquet she wants to carry three weeks after meeting a new man, while Stella rolls her eyes and gets drunk.
Maddie had believed in Jack and me more than anyone else I know. Stella knows too much about men to be able to see beyond Jack’s looks, money and power, while Kevin has seen way too much in his colorful twenty-seven years and had way too many dalliances with respectable, married, so-called straight men to be able to take marriage even remotely seriously anymore. More than a couple of people proffered unrequested opinions about my dismal future if I got together with a Wall Street banker with a questionable reputation like Jack. I even lost a dear friend whom I cared about deeply—Cameron O’Neill, one of my closest college friends from whom I’d been inseparable for a time, but whose hatred of Jack and inability to accept my relationship led to the implosion of our friendship.
But Maddie, she always believed in us, even in the beginning of the relationship when I didn’t myself. She would beam as I told her about the ecstasy of being with Jack, gloss over the numerous fears I had and stand up for him on the frequent occasions I tried to talk myself out of the relationship. She believed in us when so many people around me couldn’t see past the dangerous and intimidating beauty, power and ruthless determination of Jack.
I met Jack during my third year at Brown. He’d graduated from there a few years earlier and was already a trader on Wall Street by the time we met. I had very little time for the shtick of rich Wall Street types and even less time for the women who would shamelessly flock to them. The first six months of knowing Jack, I would roll my eyes at half of the things he said—at the overly confident way that he carried himself and the reputed ease with which he picked up and dropped women. I ribbed him mercilessly for it all. When I finally gave in to him, after over a year of resisting his advances, and fell desperately in love, Maddie was one of the first and only people to get it and not think I’d transformed overnight into some vapid, money-hungry groupie.
Sitting opposite her now as she scours his text messages, her wide eyes scanning the screen fiercely from behind her burgundy glasses, I wait for her to say something, to comfort me, to rationalize, to convince me that I’ve misread the whole thing and that there is an innocent explanation for it all.
She glances up at me, her somber green eyes making their way over to mine. “This is bad, Jess.”
Although I knew that from the start, her words still hit me like an unexpected blow. Her expression softens at the sight of my forlorn face, but she remains resolute.
“It’s really bad,” she continues. “There’s no excuse for this.”
“Ya think?” yells Kevin.
“There is nothing he could say to possibly justify this,” Maddie continues.
“No shit!” exclaims Kevin.
Stella watches me, her hazel eyes soft but betrayed by body language indicating that she is visibly trying to restrain herself from getting up and going to find Jack so that she can use his face for target practice.
“I know,” I concede, putting my head in my hands as fire and frustration overload my system. “I can’t believe that he would do this! We talked about this kind of thing—about people throwing their marriages away for shit like this. We swore it wouldn’t happen to us. I just don’t understand! After everything he did to get me to marry him, after everything that we’ve been through with me being sick, getting better, to do this now that things are perfect… It just makes no sense!”
I can’t hold my emotions in any longer and finally break down into a pool of messy tears. Stella sits down next to me and wraps an arm around me. As she tries to wipe away the flood of interminable tears, Maddie reaches across the table to hold my hand, uttering consoling words that do little to dull the pain.
Kevin picks up the phone and looks at the images again. “Lydia Bulgova!” he shouts. “I know of three other married men that she’s fucked. She’s a ruthless, cold-blooded bitch. How the hell could Jack even look at a woman like that compared to you?”
“She’s a fucking whore,” hisses Maddie.
It’s a word I can’t stand. I generally sputter annoying protests whenever I hear anybody use it, but right now it seems extremely fitting, as though calling her that dulls the pain by a couple of percentage points.
“I can’t believe he would throw a marriage away for someone like that,” I utter, my voice quivering like jello.
“I know, baby,” says Kevin, wiping tears off my flushed cheeks before lighting up another cigarette.
“Then, why?” I manage.
“You know, society fills women’s heads up with fantasies of heroes and soulmates and bullshit like that,” he responds. “Honestly, women are just naïve when it comes to the reality of relationships. I’ve slept with enough so-called straight men to know that. It’s not necessarily the man’s fault either. They have their own shit they have to put up with too. Men and women are just… different, and women still don’t seem to get that.”
“I just thought I was smarter than that,” I mutter. “I did everything I could to make sure Jack was satis—” I pause. “I didn’t think I’d be just another idiot wife getting screwed over.”
“No one’s immune, baby,” he says lovingly. “Not even a gal as smart as you.”
I offer him a smile of gratitude, aware of how lucky I am to have the love and support of these awesome people. As I wipe my eyes, Stella picks up my phone and flicks through the messages again.
“Who do you think AAA is?” she asks. “Let me see if I can look up her number.”
Stella’s work as a lawyer has taught her every trick in the book about both getting and hiding information and she gets out her phone and starts investigating as Maddie heads to the kitchen.
“It’s unlisted,” Stella says. “Doesn’t look like it’s connected to an account. Could be a throw-away phone…”
We scroll through the messages from AAA and look again at the blurry below-the-face photo.
“You don’t think…?” Stella swallows hard, her tanned oval face intensely focused as she scours the picture. “Alex,” she mutters, a hint of fear in her voice.
It takes me a moment to register who she means.
“Alex… Alexandra Frost?” Her name is ejected from my mouth against my will as my gaze dashes to the grainy image before me. The woman’s body is certainly as lithe and athletic as Alex’s, and the hint of shoulder-length blond hair looks about right.
But it can’t be. Not her.
“They were friends… for years. She was like… a sister to him,” I stutter in protest.
I cannot allow myself to believe that the woman in the picture could be a woman feared and revered as one of the queens of the Upper East Side. Besides the fact that at thirty-seven, Alex Frost is about nine years older than Jack, she also happens to be married to Steven Frost, one of the richest, most powerful men in Manhattan, and a man who has helped Jack’s career immeasurably.
“I once asked Jack if there’d ever been anything romantic between them and he said no,” I continue. “And anyway, they stopped hanging out not long after we got together. He’s barely seen her in the last two years. Plus Jack and Steven were once friends. He practically launched Jack’s career himself. There’s no way Jack would risk his career like that for someone like Alex. It can’t be her. It just… It can’t be,” I repeat, tripping over my words as if saying that it’s impossible ad infinitum will make it so.
Stella looks distinctly unconvinced. “Steven Frost’s no saint himself, as we all know. I very much doubt that seeing his wife screw around would be a deal-breaker for him. Besides, Alex probably has so much dirt on her husband, she could put him in prison for years.”
“But they’ve never had that kind of relationship,” I stammer, though the reality is that I’ve long felt uneasy about Jack and Alex’s once-close relationship, a fact not helped by the cold smiles and unflinching stares she has always given me through her pale, narrow-set eyes. I didn’t object at all when Jack stopped spending time with her and her unsavory friends after we started dating.
“It may not be her,” Stella sighs, “but I wouldn’t put anything past that bitch. Whoever it is doesn’t really matter. Whether it’s her or some other woman, what he’s doing is not okay, Jess.”
Kevin nods in agreement as Maddie returns with a pot of tea and some cups on a weathered old tray.
“I know,” I whisper.
The solemn quiet is shattered by the ring of my phone on the glass coffee table which has us all jumping out of our skin. We stare at the screen and the name that appears like some ominous threat filling the room.
JACK
“Don’t answer,” urges Maddie. “Stay here with me. You don’t have to go back there.”
I pause for a second as nervous energy floods my body, leaving my stomach churning as I build up the courage to answer and avoid having him call all night. I press the call button, clearing my throat. “Hello?”
“Baby?” Concern is etched on Jack’s word. “I’ve just got home. It’s late. Where are you?”
Deep breath. “Hey,” I utter weakly, the muscles in my throat so tight that I’m once again struggling to speak.
“Tell him I need you to help me with something,” whispers a wide-eyed Maddie, puffing on another cigarette.
“I’m at Maddie’s. She’s… she broke up with this guy she’s been dating and she’s really upset. I want to stay with her tonight.”
I cover the receiver and mouth Sorry to my friend.
“No, good!” she whispers, clearly approving of the impromptu excuse.
“Okay,” Jack responds slowly. “I don’t like sleeping without you, baby.”
I close my eyes as his loving words once again slice through me. “I know, but she’s a bit down. I don’t want to leave her alone tonight.”
Maddie gives me a thumbs up.
“Hasn’t she been through like four breakups in the last year? I’d have thought she’d be a breakup expert at this stage…”
I bristle. “Jack, I can’t really talk now. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. I have a conference call with a client in London so I’ll be at the office early. I can get a driver to pick you up if you like?”
“No, no. I’ll make my way back. Don’t worry. I’ll get a cab or something. Look, I have to go, okay?”
“Jessynia, are you sure you’re alright? You sound a bit… distant.”
Distant? I’ll show you distant, asshole.
“I’m fine. Sorry, it’s just, I can’t talk too loud. I don’t want Mad to hear me.”
“Okay. I’ll let you go, then. Goodnight, beautiful.”
“Bye.”
“I love you.”
“Bye.”
I end up spending the whole next day at Maddie’s place, feeding Jack the same excuse as before as to why I had to stay. At this point, it’s safe to say that the man is more than a tad suspicious, not least because of the uncharacteristic coolness in my voice that I’m having more and more trouble concealing.
Maddie’s work as a teacher keeps her busy during the day but we spend the second evening in deep and sometimes tearful conversation, about Jack, marriage and her fledgling relationships. Somewhere in the midst of my friend’s loving words of encouragement and glasses of corrosive whiskey that burn my stomach between morsels of food that she force-feeds me, my resolve to leave Jack strengthens, overpowering the pathetic, relentless urge I’m fighting to run straight over to our apartment and take comfort in his arms.
Lying in bed next to my amazing friend in her noisy one-bedroom Chinatown apartment, the respite of sleep eluding me once again, I realize that her warm presence barely takes the edge off the agony of knowing that I’ll never hold my husband again, never kiss him, never laugh with him, never feel his protective arms around me or have him make love to me again.
It was Jack that taught me everything I know about sex. I was pretty sure I’d covered the bases with the two boyfriends I’d had before him, but nothing could have prepared me for being educated in that department by a man as powerful, experienced and dominant as Jack. Just having him climb on top of me and pin me to the bed, fixing me with his piercing eyes and dangerous smile, used to leave me ready and desperate for his invasion. The thought of his lips on my nipples and his hard erection at the soft entrance to my body makes me feel weak. I’d never before met a man whom I wanted every minute of the day, and who knew what to do to leave me climaxing almost every time I had sex with him, who could set my skin on fire with the gentlest of touches, and leave my sex pulsating just by pinning my hands to the mattress and brushing my lips with his tongue.
As I think about the last time his tongue tenderly explored the most intimate parts of my body, I can’t stop myself imagining his naked body and the words from his mistresses that I read on his secret phone—words now imprinted on my brain—play wicked, torturous games with my mind.
I can’t stop thinking about you.
I will do whatever you tell me to do.
You give the orders.
Dreaming about your hard body.
My mouth is your plaything.
I’m naked, my lord.
I’ll always be your slave.
The insomnia ogre tightens its merciless grip as fury, despair, jealousy and disbelief keep me from slumber and a cold sweat leaves me shivering despite the muggy June heat. God, my body feels cold without his. It’s as though there’s a layer of ice lying just beneath the sheets.
Tenebrous emotions cloak me like swathes of fog, imprisoning me in a web of malaise. I want to get up and just run; run until my legs can’t carry me anymore; run away from Manhattan, away from Jack, never to see his face again.
It is over.