NINE
AIDAN
I need to get my dick wet.
When I first moved back to Chicago, I hated it. Hated the cold. Hated the memories of an unhappy childhood that seemed to be lurking around every single corner, ready to fuck me up without warning.
But as time slipped by, I actually began to appreciate the beauty of the city. I never thought I’d say I looked forward to winter here, but eventually I began to relish wrapping up warm, the smoke steaming on my breath as I hurried through the streets. I began to love the food. Lincoln Park Zoo. The Adler Conservatory. Grant Park. But, most importantly, I began to love the people.
The line between rich and poor is stark in this town, and yet the people without money tend to be some of the happiest. The ones who really appreciate life. I’ve found joy in donning a t-shirt and jeans and doing community work in some of the rougher neighborhoods. The life stories people will tell you are insane, and yet they’ll laugh them off afterward and say they’re better because of their experiences.
And I love the women.
I’ve always had a sexual appetite. In Hawaii, the girls I fucked were usually tourists—women who were around for a week or two, who could never really ask too much of me. Not that I’m relationship shy. I’m just particular. Sex, for me, is a practice in trust. I know what I like, and what I like can be intimidating to some people.
Not all women are comfortable with being tied up.
Not all women are comfortable with being spanked.
Not all women are okay with being gagged and bound.
Not all women are cool with being teased and manipulated and brought to the edge of orgasm over and over again for hours at a time.
But, then again, there are women who are okay with all of those things, and somehow they always seem to gravitate towards me. It’s been months since I’ve fucked anyone, though. I’ve had a few regular contacts I’ve kept close ties with since I moved back here, however I haven’t wanted them of late. I’ve been dreaming. Seriously fucking weird that some dreams have kept my dick in my pants, but it’s true. These have been the most intense dreams I’ve ever experienced, highly sexual in nature, and they’ve all featured one woman. The one woman I can’t have.
Maybe I just like torturing myself. That could easily be it. I know I shouldn’t want this woman, ergo she’s all I can think about. If she knew the dark, nasty things I’ve been doing to her in my head, she would probably try and slit my throat.
When I woke up this morning, my sheets were full of semen and my head was pounding from lack of oxygen. Even in my sleep, I hold my breath when I’m coming. How fucking messed up is that?
I try to put the girl out of my head as I shower and get myself ready for work. Instead, I find myself thinking of Alex. I’ve often wondered if, given the choice, my brother would rather be alive, or would he rather be dead and have me stuck here running this company. Him dying really was the only way to get me back here, crammed inside a suit, itching to break out every single damn day. If Alex didn’t make it into Heaven and was instead cast into the fiery pits of hell, I’m betting he’d rather stay there than come back to Earth to relieve me of this responsibility. That really would be an Alex Callahan-sized fuck you.
That might seem like yet more hyperbole, but bear with me. The antagonizing relationship Alex and I shared was far more than a simple case of sibling rivalry. Basically, he never forgave me for what went down when we were teenagers. Sure, if you were to ask him, he’d say it was all water under the bridge. That would be a lie, though. He still hated me for what happened, and did until the day he died.
So seeing me here—if he’s capable of it, wherever he is now—is probably giving him a great deal of pleasure. He’s probably quite happy that I’m back in Chicago, doing exactly what he wanted me to be doing.
I don’t wake up late. I don’t spend my days on the beach anymore. My tan has faded to almost nothing. I could take a vacation, but that siren song would be irresistible. I’d probably disappear to some remote island forever. No, these days I get up early, sometimes just as the sun is beginning to rise. I might work out first, or I might just stand at the kitchen counter and drink a cup of coffee before quickly showering and dressing myself in the exact same corporate clothing I always shunned.
If I pass a mirror, I don’t recognize the person staring back at me. The reflection doesn’t register as anyone I know, or would like to know. I am the man my father always wanted me to be, and yet he’s not alive to see it. Or perhaps he’s watching from the afterlife and getting a big kick out of it. His corporation, his legacy, didn’t end up run into the ground with me at the helm; it’s thrived, making me one of the richest men in the country. Forget Hawaii, forget spending long days on the beach, out on the ocean. Now, I live in a landlocked state where the biggest body of water is a lake (albeit a rather large one) and I get up every morning and put on a monkey suit.
I’m not exactly sure what happened. After the funeral service for my family, I fully intended to sell the company, dismantle the fucking thing, hack it up and sell it off in bits to whoever would take it, and then hightail it back to Hawaii. I didn’t give a fuck. Let the Callahan Corporation crash and burn for all I cared. Not like there aren’t plenty of other corporate conglomerates that could have taken over right where my father and brother left off.
But that’s not what went down. I got to know my father’s employees. I realized I was responsible for the livelihoods of well over four hundred people, and if I turned my back on the business, their positions would be meaningless. Someone else would take over and start making cut backs, and jobs would be the first thing to go.
And then there was the need to make a point, too. That was the part I never expected. I was given something I didn’t want, yet somehow it became something that I had to succeed at. I wanted to prove to Arturo, to my father’s and Alex’s associates, to my dead mother, even, that I could do this. That I hadn’t been spending my time teaching people how to surf and been a beach bum because I wasn’t capable of making it in the corporate world.
I was doing that because I loved it. And this…I found myself doing this because, no matter how much I hated it, it was the right thing to do.
The city’s barely even awake by the time I’m at work, standing in my office, looking out the south-facing window over the high rises and the pillars of steam rising from the sidewalk. From this window I like to watch people walking on the sidewalk below, watch people going about their daily lives, sitting in their office, diligently working. And I wonder about those people, I wonder what their lives are like, and if they’re doing what makes them happy or if they’re doing what they feel is required of them, even if they hate it.
Behind me, the email alert chimes on my laptop. Another email. I should figure out how to disable that fucking thing. The messages are constant, most from people I don’t even know wanting money, wanting approval, wanting my goddamn soul. It’s dizzying how much attention people will pay you for public appearances when you’re suddenly worth a lot of money, when you suddenly find yourself in a position of power. It makes you realize how fake most people are. Nothing about me has changed, and yet suddenly I’m meant to be someone of great importance. No one would have looked twice at me if I’d stayed in Hawaii and was still a beach bum.
Eventually, I make my way back to my desk. Sitting down in front of the computer, I slide my hand over the mouse pad, activating the screen. Five years ago, as my screensaver I uploaded a picture of one of my best friends nailing a pipe, the water the most crazy color of blue, arcing over his head as he grinned straight at the camera. At me. I’d been right there with him, sitting in that wave. That I’d even managed to snap off the image was a complete fluke. I got rolled while he rode the thing out. Afterwards we’d gotten blind drunk and fucked some tourists from the mainland to celebrate.
It took me all of four months to change the screensaver to corporate, plain blue. It just depressed the ever-loving shit out of me to look at it, to see the pure joy and adrenalin on my friend’s face, and to not be able to experience it for myself anymore. I shake my head, turning my attention to other things.
Email. I’m meant to be focusing on my email. Clicking on the desktop icon, I scroll from the bottom up, making sure to reply to people in the order in which the messages came through. I’m about to click on the first message when my eyes catch on something closer to the top of the screen. A name. Her name. The girl from my dreams.
“What the fuck?”
Essie Floyd.
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that’s been waiting for her to email, or call, or to get in touch. Just drop back into my life somehow. It’s been a remote hope, one of those things you keep tucked safely away in the back of your mind that you tell yourself is probably never going to happen, and that it would be for the best if it didn’t.
And yet, here it is, happening. After all this time, she’s reaching out.
I start reading.
Mr. Callahan,
My name is Essie Floyd. I’ve been working at Mendel, Goldstein & Hofstadter for several years now, but I’ve never had the pleasure of directly working for you until now. Mr. Goldstein has been shifting around some of the internal roles at the firm, and he’s got me doing a few bits and pieces for the Callahan Corporation. I found some forms this morning that are dated from February three years ago. They’re annotated for your signature, but it seems that they haven’t been signed yet. I was wondering if I could bring them by your office?
Regards,
Essie Floyd
I read the message again. And then I read it one more time. What on earth is she up to? Essie may not realize it, but I know perfectly well who she is. She’s the sister of Vaughn Floyd, the guy who lost his life when my brother fell asleep at the wheel. Suddenly finding myself the head of Callahan Corporation has afforded me some luxuries that I wouldn’t normally have had. Such as: keeping an eye on Essie all these years. Not me, personally, of course. I’ve got a few people—Arturo used to be one of them—who have kept an eye on her. I’m sure there were much more qualified applicants to the legal secretary job at M, G & H, but when I got word that Essie had applied, I made sure she was hired. Because while I was living thousands of miles away from the family I lost, Essie, as I found out later, was very close to her brother. They’d been living together in some shitty apartment, her waitressing at a little café, him working two jobs, one as a delivery truck driver the other as a bike mechanic. Neither of them were earning much. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that the two of them depended on each other. Had been from a young age. I frequently tried to imagine my own brother and I having a relationship like that and the idea of it seemed laughable.
It probably sounds psychotic that I’ve been keeping an eye on a woman like this, someone I don’t even know, but I couldn’t help myself.
That day, the day of the funerals, I saw her across the cemetery. We made eye contact and that was it. I felt like I was falling face first down a dark, bottomless hole and I was never going to climb the hell back out again. She hated me. I could see it so plainly on her face. She fucking hated me, and that awful expression she wore burned its way into my brain. I haven’t been able to shake it since. I made a decision that I was going to make her life better somehow right there and then. I was going to make sure she didn’t suffer any further if I could prevent it.
Much like staying here and running the business, it’s not something that I necessarily want to be doing, but I feel I have to. Perhaps because I wanted to apologize, even though I wasn’t the one who was driving. Perhaps it was because I could relate—we both lost our entire families that day.
I look back to the computer screen and hit reply.
Essie,
Thank you for your due diligence. I’d be very pleased if you could bring the documents by for me to sign. Three years is a long time to have paperwork incomplete.
I will be free tomorrow afternoon, should this suit you.
Regards,
- A. Callahan.
I hit send, and my fingertips feel like they’re sweating. What the hell is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be engaging with this girl. Not really. While my investigators have been keeping an eye on her, they’ve witnessed too many disturbing incidences to count. Binge drinking. Minor drug addiction. The guys that go in and out of her apartment haven’t exactly been stand up members of society. I stopped wanting to know about that part after a while. I had my guys monitor her, make sure she was safe, but I didn’t want to know every time she took a new guy home with her. It made me feel….I don’t know. It made me feel shitty, for some reason. There’s a knock at the door, thankfully drawing me away from thoughts of Essie fucking other guys. “Come in.”
It opens, and Bridget’s blonde head appears. “Morning, Mr. Callahan,” she says brightly, stepping into the room.
I minimize the open email on my desktop. “Hey.” I’ve stopped telling her that she can call me Aidan. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I do, she’s still going to refer to me as Mr. Callahan. Makes me feel like my fucking father.
The granddaughter of my father’s good friend and former colleague, Jens Nordahl, Bridget’s a rangy, eager-faced girl of twenty-two. I think Jens and his family are hoping she’ll be the one to make me settle down. I’m not even entirely sure what her official job title here is; if I had to guess I’d say she’s my executive assistant’s assistant. Seeing as I inherited Gloria, my father’s ancient E.A., it’s good to have some younger energy around.
And she does have a killer rack.
“How are you?” she asks. “Do you need any coffee?”
“No, I’m all set. Thank you, though.”
“Okay.” She looks mildly disappointed. “Are you hungry? Is there anything else I could get you?”
“I’m fine, Bridget. Thank you.”
She stands there smiling, waiting for some instruction, anything that she can do for me. She’s a good-looking girl with an elegantly featured face. Most men would give their right nut to be in the position where this young pretty thing is all but begging for the chance to service them. I could say, “Well, Bridge, actually, I’d like us to play a little game. It’s called Army. We’re gonna go over to that couch. I’m gonna sit down, and you’re gonna blow the hell out of me,” and she’d be more than happy to oblige. With a mouth like hers, I get the feeling she’d be really good at Army.
But she makes me uneasy. She’s my employee, and things would go badly if I started shitting where I eat. Plus I don’t want to hurt her. She’s so eager, so desperate to make me smile and compliment her, say something to prove that I actually do like her. She’s not a bad girl. She’ll meet some guy and make him very happy, but that guy isn’t going to be me. The only thing that makes me happy these days is Oxy.
“All right then,” she says finally. She wrings her hands together. “Oh! I knew there was another reason that I came in here. My dad wanted me to ask you if you were available this Friday. It’s my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and we’re having a surprise party for them. It’d be really great if you could be there.” She’s got that starry look in her eyes. “Can you imagine being married for fifty years? And they’ve always been so happy together.”
I smile. “That’s a wonderful accomplishment,” I say. “And certainly something to be celebrated. But to be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine being married at all.”
She looks crestfallen, like she’s secretly already been planning our wedding day. She recovers quickly, though. “Can I tell my father that you’ll be there? It really would mean a lot. To him, but also to my grandfather.”
I’ve had to do a lot of these sorts of things over the years—be there at events and functions, the ambassador for my dead family. Talk about the sorts of things my father or brother might, reminisce about other occasions and events that I wasn’t even there for. Just the sort of shit I’ll have to do at this fiftieth wedding anniversary surprise party.
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
After Bridget leaves, I find the folder I keep within another folder on my desktop, and I open it. I named it backups, but that’s not what it is. It’s photographs and some basic information about Essie. I look at the pictures. In a way, there’s a part of me that feels as though I know her. These aren’t photos a hired PI took of her; they’re photos she put up on Facebook, though she deleted her account after a few months, not long after she started working at the law firm, actually. The first thought that occurred to me when I saw her profile picture was that she looked a lot like Hannah. In fact, they could be sisters. And of course, why the hell wouldn’t she look like Hannah? The universe is just that fucked. My brother kills Essie’s brother, and then Essie ends up looking like the spitting image of the girl both me and my brother fell in love with.
If neither of us had met Hannah, would things have been different between Alex and me? They certainly would’ve turned out differently for Hannah. Back then, I hadn’t actually thought about Hannah in a while. Too painful. But seeing Essie brought back so many memories. If Alex were alive, I knew he’d say the same thing: That chick looks just like the girlfriend you stole from me.