The Halter

by floggingink, gingertumericlemon

Summary:

There was always somebody she didn't know hanging around her house, so Chrissy at first sight didn't pay the man in black any mind.

Chapter 1: Alley Sour

She couldn’t move her wrists.

That was the first thing. 

The second thing was that her face was wrong. 

The third thing was that she knew from the sponge-painted wallpaper and the view of the Tetons outside that she was in St. Anne’s all over again. 

The fourth thing was that there was a stranger napping in the chair opposite her. 

The fifth thing was the pain. 

The sixth thing was that it wasn’t a stranger actually because duh it was her husband.

She tried to open her other eye to see him better but could not. Then she tried to touch her face to see what was wrong but she could not because of the first thing.

She couldn’t talk either. It was like that nightmare where you couldn’t run except in her throat. Maybe she was dreaming but she was in too much pain for anything but reality. That’s right. The pain was also the seventh thing and the eighth and the ninth and so on basically though about seventy-five!

She tried to speak again but could not gather enough saliva. The plastic mattress crinkled beneath her. Hospital bed. Call button. But she couldn’t reach it! Wrist etc. Weakly she rattled her arm and was rewarded with pain so shocking all along her shoulder girdle that she peed herself, a little. But there was–it was fine. It was a hospital. Right? That kind of thing happened here. Nobody could get mad at her for that. Could they? She felt heat crawl up her chest anyway. So she was awake enough to feel embarrassed.

OK. She was in St. Anne’s. She was probably not here as a visitor. The room was thick with the scent of lilies and sweet peas, an attempt to mask the antiseptic hospital funk that everybody complained about but she’d never actually minded. It suggested, like. Stuff getting done! Competent hand-washing people who flicked syringes with purpose and wore pens around their necks. That kind of thing always made her feel safe. There was something wrong with her. Shoulder and arm, certainly. Face, perhaps. Why were her wrists bound? That was for later. There were like, a LOT of flowers. A stuffed palomino the size of a real foal propped next to a rainbow posterboard printed with LET’S GET YOU BACK ON THAT HORSE!

She gagged. She needed water. Very badly. There was a gray plastic pitcher and her mind shrunk to a pinpoint of longing at the thought of that really amazing pebble ice they always had in hospitals….

How to get it. She was–um. That’s right. She was a trooper. Famously so! Hands, out of the question. Fine. Inventory! What else did she have. Feet. Those were unbound. OK. OK! She kicked the bedframe. Once. Twice. She’d had a dance class like this! On the third time he awoke with a jolt.

“Chrissy,” Jason breathed, “Chrissy, thank God–”

She jerked her head towards the pitcher and he was like what? And she had to do it two more times and finally humiliatingly stick out her tongue before he got it. Her tongue was so dry and small it felt like the used silkworm cocoon she’d hidden for years in her magic things drawer. The drawer held her most secret treasures and private joys until she was thirteen and her mom surprised her with a big-girl bedroom makeover when she returned from a barrel racing competition in Bozeman where she’d won her first buckle. The buckle had four huge turquoise stones embedded in it and was so heavy it hurt to wear. The magic things drawer inside her little-girl desk she never saw again.

Hey! Her past was there after all. So her brains hadn’t been totally scrambled when it crushed her skull. That’s right! It had crushed her skull. 

He lifted the straw to her lips and the cool water tasted so good she actually moaned in the back of her newly-resurrected throat. A muscle in Jason’s hand flexed at the noise. But he rode it out and did not take away the water until there was nothing but dredging scraping sounds of suction. Then Chrissy leaned back and closed her eyes for nearly a minute. When she opened them, Jason was still beside her, leaning forward with his own eyes shut, clasped palms braced on his knees like he was in prayer which probably he was. At last she had enough strength to speak.

“Baby,” she said. Jason opened his eyes. She had interrupted him before he could say Amen. “Baby. Why am I tied up?”

He put one hand over her immobile arm. “Honey, you had–” and here Jason paused as some massive emotion perhaps fastened to his unfinished/unlaunched prayer moved through his voice. “You had a real bad reaction to the anesthetic. You were thrashing and hollering, and your nails–you could have hurt yourself. The nurse said a girl went blind once from nails like those.”

Chrissy looked down at her nails. Inch-long almond tip baby blue with airbrushed hearts the color of denim and real Swarovski crystals glued to the center. Competition nails. They matched her outfit. Where was her outfit? Probably it was covered in her blood. She remembered the sound of the matching crystals on her blouse crunching beneath the hoof. Oh actually no that was probably bone which made that noise! Like fresh ice underfoot! It was coming back now!

She turned her head as much as she could to meet Jason’s face. When she looked him directly in the eye, he flinched. It was so small a gesture that she knew he thought she hadn’t noticed.

“Baby, these are press-ons.” Jason stared but not at her. Beyond her, somehow, even though his beautiful blue eyes were nocked like an arrow into the center of her face. It was as if he was willing his gaze to pass through her entirely, a straight shot to the wall behind her. He could not bear to take her in. That meant something was really wrong. Jason like, loved her face. 

Anyway, wherever he was looking. He did not fucking get it about the nails. She tried again.

“That means they come off. All you need’s a little–” Dear God and Jesus please let me get this right, let the clouds dissolve enough to show him I’m not broken forever, “Acetone.” Her foot flexed in pleasure. 

Jason took her left hand in his own. Her ring, she noticed, was gone. “These are fake?”

Chrissy's first real emotion of the day begin to crest through the blanket of medical-grade sedative still wrapping her so tight she could hardly breathe or think. “Jason, you watched me put them on.”

He looked at her. He thought she was still high. “We were watching Home Improvement. Tim. Um. Tim. He had a snake in the basement. You were drinking a Modelo.”

His expression did not change. He did not believe her. And so her path altered forever.

Because really and truly, swear to God, she opened her mouth to say forget it. He was right and she was wrong. Could she have more ice. Her as always aim to soften and sweeten and receive in return the reliable simplicity of his affection. But that was not what happened. It was as if the water had melted something long-dormant in her throat. Something alive and hollow. A razor-cut grin. A passenger which seized her vocal cords like reins, so powerful that she had no choice but to bend. A voice like silt whispered in her ear, “Sweetheart I’ve got it from here,” and she ceded to it with a weakling’s pleasure. 

Thus instructed, her own voice purposely cracked but she was not crying at all as she said, “Baby? Where’s my wedding ring?”

Jason’s superior, distant look vanished. It was instantly replaced with the kind of custodial concern with which he normally filled her tubs with epsom salts, or brought her gin and sodas as she rewound her old competition cassettes with her notebook balanced on her knee. She should react to this with gratitude for her husband. But all she felt was a cold-rising thrill at how quickly she’d punished him. The passenger got hold now of her bottom lip which wobbled until it got what it wanted, which was further destabilization. And how Jason looked unsettled. How he looked guilty! The hateful thing had full possession of her mouth now. It curled and glowed in pleasure like burning paper. Oh God. This felt wonderful.

He stood and patted the pockets of his stiff Wranglers, still shelf-fresh in their starch and dark indigo hue. “I kept it with me for safekeeping. Chrissy, you can’t trust anybody in these hospitals, not with all these painkillers around–you’re so sweet to ask, I should have done this right away–”

He was nervous. She never saw him nervous! He located the ring–four carat princess cut WS1 clarity platinum band channel setting oooh she WAS feeling better!–and slid it on her finger. He seemed relaxed at last. This caused the passenger to yank her tongue. It was not satisfied. She began to feel a little creeped out. What the fuck was going on!? Maybe this was like a sedative hangover. Without her approval, an unpracticed but powerful whine seeped into her voice.

“I’m still tied up.” 

At the sound of her complaint, Jason’s head tilted the way the dogs’ did when the coyotes began to gibber beyond the fence late at night. The canine understanding that the thing yipping and cackling outside the ranch wore a dog’s shape and a dog’s coat but was not a dog. The primal knowledge of the invader. To get him to focus, she rattled her wrist. He blinked and nodded and unbound her. Her hand rose to touch her face but he caught her by the palm. “Chrissy, I think we–I think we should prepare you.”

She tugged her hand from his grasp and was rewarded with pain so extreme that she gagged again. It was not sharp. It did not stab. It was a nauseatingly soft, dizzying pain. A pain of collapsed muscle and enforced weakness. Slit tendons and missing cartilage. A pain which threatened, “Do not fucking move like that again or I am taking this entire operation down with me you stupid ugly bitch.” It was a pain to shutter vision and loosen bowels. Like having foreign fingers under your skin, inside your tissues, stroking your veins. It was wrong. It was so fucking wrong.

Still. She’d gotten in that one tug. Jason was looking at her again with that dog’s stare. He took his voice low and understanding like she was a child. “There’s a lot of bruising. Wayne was able to get you out from under her after just a few seconds. He probably saved your life. Your clavicle and ribs, they’ll heal with time. But she–Chrissy, you took it square in the face. There’s bad bruising. Swelling. You were lucky you didn’t break your jaw. And you needed stitches.”

The pain knelt across her chest. It kneaded her brain. She was its thrall. Faintly she asked, “How many?”

“Twenty-seven.” 

Oh. “That’s a lot.” 

Weirdly she remembered back when they were newly-engaged, back in ‘89, and Jason had been so scared about having to fire somebody at his daddy’s firm for the first time that she’d said it’s OK baby you can practice on me. That’s right. That was where she’d seen this expression before. Mournful. But firm. Only one way forward!

“They’re saying there’s a good chance there won’t be permanent damage. But Chrissy, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to shock you.” 

The passenger tried to speak. But she was rising up from under the pain again and gathered enough strength to muzzle it for now. She was Chrissy Carver! Stage name Cunningham! Media-trained and camera-ready, always and forever Amen! She stuck the twinkle back in her voice, dulled as it might be. “Good thing I’m done with pageants for the season, huh?”

Jason smiled like he recognized her for the first time. He brushed her knuckles with the back of his hand. “There’s my trooper.”

“Can I see?”

Jason hesitated, which was also rare. “Your mom wants to be here.”

Her stomach wrenched once, hard. Suddenly, stupidly, she was afraid she might pee herself again. Stop it. She was a grown girl. “Here for what?”

“I can call her.”

“For what, Jason?” That whining pitch, again, smuggled into her voice. A little less new this time. A little more practiced. It got easier the more he looked at her like that. The memory of her mother warning her that trusted neighbors might hide razor blades in candy apples.

Jason sighed his most reasonable sigh. This was the “You asked for it” exhale which accompanied the unleashing of Boomer, his most idiotic collie, when Boomer wanted to run straight into the sliding plate glass door because there was a jackrabbit outside. Afterwards Jason would allow the wailing pup to crawl into his lap for babying and chiding as Chrissy watched from the upstairs railing with her gin and soda before returning to Laura and the tapes. The memories drifted back like snow.

He walked over to the sink and unhooked a small mirror from the wall. He returned to her bedside with it obscured behind his back. “The doctor said it’s normal to have. Um. A reaction.”

“OK.” She was great at managing reactions!

Jason knelt so that the mirror would be level with her face. He showed her herself.

 The colors were what she noticed first. An Avon lady’s sampler of purples and reds along her eyes and cheeks. The saleslady might call these Bold and Dramatic Shades for a New You. Chrissy mightily call them Organ Meat. Sickly interior cavity colors which matched the pain through her clavicle. True indigo–darker than Jason’s Wrangler’s–along her right eye socket. The white of her eye was no longer a White but a Red. The bruises feathered out to green and yellow along the edges. The colors of diseased plants. The other eye was swollen shut–that was why she’d had to turn her head! The numbers were adding up! The slit of her engorged eyelid looked kind of like a vagina, actually, and the ease of the thought’s obscenity surprised her. Crawling along her cheeks as railroad tracks crossed the frontier were the promised stitches. Crusted and raw. The thread black and prickled as barbed wire.

“Oh shit,” she whispered, and Jason laughed at her profanity. “Baby,” he said. He masked his shock with indulgence.

Her upper lip was split and fat, a blistered sausage lost to campfire coals. It felt extremely weird. She cautiously raised her fingers to the lip and tapped once. No. The weird feeling wasn’t stored in the lip. She’d been riding since she was four. She’d had a busted lip before. It lived behind the lip. Jason watched her peel it down with her finger (it was too swollen to curl on its own accord) and she saw a contained, boyish glee nearly breach his measured expression as her eyes fell on the interior of her mouth for the first time.

When she was nine, Chrissy’s mother had taken her to a small processing plant behind the granite quarry forty miles from their property. The quarry trafficked primarily in local sunset rock for landscaping, but Laura’s father had died and she wanted a crystal white granite gravestone, which the quarry shipped in raw from Wisconsin. The stone was cut and polished to Laura’s specs in advance, but she’d wanted options so there were six varieties to choose from laid out flat on the opencast miner’s table. The rest would be resold at a loss back to the Cunninghams. Laura didn’t care. As she scratched her father’s name in soft pencil across the front of each to assess the finest fit, Chrissy ran her small fingers across the smooth, even granite. She’d never seen anything so white. So fine. So exactly alike. Only her mother’s naked eye could detect within the slabs flaws on a sedimentary level which would disqualify five of the identical stones and leave one the champion to mark the dead.

The clarity of the memory told her the truth which was that these same stones were in her mouth now. Lined up in tidy white rows. She tried to muster all of her strength. There had been a terrible mistake. “Jason, where are my teeth?”

He laughed gently. “Right there, baby.” He pointed at the cold white things in her mouth. 

No. These weren’t crooked. So they weren’t her teeth. These were the headstones. Jason was confused. Maybe that’s why he was acting like such an asshole!!! She ran her tongue over them once. They felt huge and slick. She shook her head. It felt wildly heavy. No. If she could just explain—but her words were fuzzing together again. Her eyes landed on the IV bag by her arm which was starting to drip something clear and sweet into the needle taped to her arm. Ah. OK. The passenger which had briefly puppeteered her to such effective heights of bitchery was squashed under the drugs. It feebly raised a middle finger in Jason’s direction before sinking back inside her. She tried to lift her head but could not. OK!!!!!

Her good eye met her husband’s face, and he smiled so big and so beautiful. Oh , she thought droopily. That’s why he’s happy. Now we match. She gathered every thread of resolve she could find. “Where—where’s my mama?” 

He squeezed her liberated hands which felt numb and light and weak like she was stuffed with straw. “She’ll be here soon. She’s gonna wanna see how they turned out. It was her idea. She knew how much you always wanted to have them fixed. We wanted to give you one silver lining to this whole mess.”

“Did they get smaaAAAaashed?” Sing-song all along the vowels. Oooh! She sounded kind of pretty!

Jason frowned. “No. Not in the accident. But—I mean, they’ve always been a problem. You’ve said so for years.” Hmm that sounded like a lie but OK Jason husband sweetie!!!!! 

“Where are they?” She slurred. Ooooops.

“Where are what, baby?”

“MY teeth.” She was losing control of her tone again. It was a massive pout now, a not-my-bedtime protest, and Jason received it as such. Jason famously did not have time for bellyachers!!!! He spoke plainly as he refilled her water cup. 

“They’re gone, baby. These are your new ones. They’re made of porcelain.” He set the water within her reach and added, “That’s the most expensive kind.”

She looked again into the mirror, now propped against the bed tray. Her face was an unrecognizable ruin of mottled tissue. A Halloween rubber mask left floating in a cistern after a party, bloated and discolored. She whispered boo and watched a stranger’s lips form the syllable. Eek!  And shining through the disgorged gash that was pretending to be her mouth was this perfect line of gleaming porcelain. Her old lopsided grin would have been the one thing confirming that this collection of unfamiliar features and the unfamiliar whine and the unfamiliar hot vile thing, tempered now only by the sweetness of the IV bag, was actually her.

Now this thing in the mirror could be anybody. It could be anything.

 Dreamily, she raised her nails to the bloat. She remembered once on Johnny Carson seeing Dolly Parton play the William Tell overture by running her acrylic nails against each other as if playing a washboard. It had been so funny!!! Jason was looking at her strangely over the big cup of water and Chrissy realized oooops AGAIN she’d said that out loud!

Chrissy tapped her index finger once on her front tooth. Ooh. That was a noise! Click. She did it again. Click. And again. Clickityclicklicklick. The two parts of her whose perfection still endured. Dolly Parton said she might look artificial but she was totally real! Acrylic and porcelain. Porcelain and acrylic. Acrylic. Acrylic-ick-click-click-click!

When Chrissy passed out she was laughing.

---

They brought her home in August. As predicted, the cracked clavicle and ribs knit themselves together with the aid of time and calcium supplements. The shoulder socket took longer. She had to wear a rehabilitative sling during the days and was instructed to avoid strenuous activity. This was easy because her rodeo calendar was finished for the season so she didn’t even have to pretend to mind.

The pools of green and purple in her face diffused into new rotted tones every couple of days. The Frankenstein stitches, once extracted, left a row of puffy, shiny puncture marks all down her face. At night Chrissy rubbed them with a silicone gel Laura had ordered specially from Sweden as Jason pretended not to watch while he flossed. Her porcelain teeth gleamed perpetual white even after she did something forbidden like drinking black coffee without a straw. Laura paid a nail tech to come to the house every Sunday to give her something to look forward to.

For the first time in her life her days were formless. She wore soft clothes that hid her shape and drank endless diet sodas as she gazed out the window at the ranch grounds for hours. At first she occupied the huge leather sofa downstairs in front of the fireplace, with the double-story picture windows and Pendleton blankets worn to just-right nubbly softness. Outside Wayne had set a salt lick there so she could watch the mule deer and antelope up close as she recovered. The aspen leaves were saffron and the cottonwoods ember-bright, and the sky was her favorite autumn shade of slate laced with veins of silver sun. Sometimes Jessie, the curly blonde ranch hand who always left her blouse buttoned too low, swung by with cherry Chapstick or shea butter for Chrissy’s dwindling calluses. 

But the arrival of hunting season meant Jason and his father were to entertain the Carver Mining Group’s most trusted vendors and valuable clients with endless elk tags and their choice of scope-rifle or genuine crossbow. The first floor soon flooded with men in new vests from Abercrombie & Fitch and clean boots which squeaked as the men gossiped and drank fresh coffee from carafes set out by the new housekeeper. (Chrissy could never keep them straight. Jason hired all the staff.) And for a couple of days they were all polite and stuff. But then the CEO of Kimball Consulting LLC looked at Chrissy sideways and she vomited bilious Diet Coke foam on the hardwood, so she wasn’t allowed to be downstairs anymore.

The hallways were impossible, covered as they were with photos of her in her glory. She tried to flip them over or hide them. But they always returned. Even the home gym had her sponsorship pictures mounted between the elliptical and the freeweights. Chrissy Cunningham Prefers Destiny Tie-Down Lariats. Chrissy Cunningham Wears Tecovas Boots. Chrissy Cunningham Only Uses EverRite Lash Glue. Where there were no photos, there were mirrors. She did not know which was worse. 

So she hid away in the upstairs den with the TV on maximum volume, playing the kind of Lifetime movies about kidnapped preteens that Jason despised. This kept him away most of the time. She still had a view, albeit smaller and restricted by the chimney, from which she could watch Wayne driving their small head of sheep to far-away pasture. She watched the seasonal help bale the last of the hay and clear endless brush as the air got drier and colder, which they burned in pyres she could see smoking blue against the gray sky from acres away. Jessie had set up a step-powered bucket catapult on the browning lawn for Nora, neurotic and rangy after her spaying, so that the dog could leap on one end and hurl tennis balls for herself until she collapsed. The animal was deemed unfit for ranch service after she gored a lamb in the previous spring. Richard, Jason’s father, had been prepared to shoot her but Jason begged with a passion alien to Chrissy in all their marital dealings to spare the animal’s life. He had actually had tears in his eyes! Jason could always forgive the dogs for things like that. And so for hours Nora played fetch with herself as bouncy, blonde Jessie goaded the dog on from her ATV with peals of encouragement, and the ranch got grayer and stiller and the elk herds got thinner as the gunshots rang out and Chrissy watched all this from her window.

Sometimes outside the shuttered den doors she heard Jason’s hushed voice in conference and that was how she knew her mother was in town. Afterwards Laura always walked away and pretended to arrive anew outside her door with a cheerful knock. Often she bore magazines which were welcome. The first few visits she brought packs of Chrissy’s favorite Big Red, but gum felt so weird stretched along her new teeth that soon Laura gave up on that too. When Laura talked about the stables Chrissy nodded and heard nothing. Only her body was here. She was a thousand miles away.

In this way the weeks passed. The conferences increased throughout. The magazine supply dried up. The stable talk increased. The knocks got less cheerful.

Midway through September, Jason entered her den. Chrissy turned the volume way way way WAY up on Not Without My Daughter but he was undeterred. Jason sat on the edge of her sofa where she’d taken to sleeping overnight and touched the bottom of her sock. She allowed this. 

“I was thinking,” he said, with care, “That we could go for a drive today.” 

In his open palm he extended a pack of Virginia Slims. Fuck. It had been weeks. Her mouth watered. She reached. He drew them away. Fine! Fine!!!

The passenger instructed her to wear a thick flannel work jacket which belonged to his father against the autumn frost just to see if Jason would react. To his credit, he didn’t. He asked her to roll down the windows of the Bronco if she was going to smoke and she did. They drove down the long dirt road from the big house, past the barn and the silo, past the cabins and the smaller corral, past the endless stands of sagebrush. They passed the mouth of the rocky brook where Jason took clients fly-fishing and the dead oak which once held a rope swing that Jason swore was the best part of his boyhood.

At the fork he turned left. Her cheek twitched. Her new teeth felt huge and dead in her mouth.

“Jason.”

He pretended he didn’t know. “Yeah?” He switched his turn signal to left again and Chrissy felt the three bites of oatmeal she’d allowed churn in her gut.

“No.” There was, horribly, the thinnest thread of panic in her voice. He paid her no mind. He brought the Bronco to a stop outside the buck and rail fence.  

“Chrissy. It’s time.” 

The oatmeal once again announced itself. Her ears prickled with white noise. This was the feeling of waiting in the alley. The crowd roaring. The animal tensing. She would not panic. She was in control. She felt a wonderful tunnel open up inside her mind and draw her up and away. Jason was now harmless as a far-away radio station. The passenger in complete control. She took another drag of her Virginia Slim and waited. 

“I asked Wayne to tack and groom her. She’s already saddled up and waiting. She didn’t give him any trouble at all.” 

It cost nothing to stay silent.  

“You don’t even have to ride her. I know it’s too early, yet. You just have to go be with her. Jessie’s gone in. So have I. She’s gentle as can be, Chris. There’ll be nothing to it. The vet says it’ll be the first step to her recovery.” Unspoken in this was: and yours. 

“OK.” Chrissy ashed into the wind. A hint of that beautiful smile crossed Jason’s face, trying to coax out its twin in her own. “Is that a yes? Or at least a we’ll see?”

Chrissy looked at him. Jesus. Hope made him slow. It always did. “No, Jason.” His face looked quite hurt which produced in her the effect of trying to fake interest in a submarine movie or ACC basketball game. 

“Your mom and I have been patient, Chris. But this—“ and he took in all he understood her to be with a gesture small and incurious— “This isn’t healthy. For anybody.” The minute he said the word mom she was yanked back into her body by malicious gravity and her head against her will turned towards the pen and it was there.

It was staring at the Bronco. Chrissy felt the pain fork up her arm, the feeling like being lanced by a needle inch by excruciating inch. Its eyes were marble-round and wet. Its muscles firm and reptilian under the shining skintight hide. Its power undiminished. She was so weak. It was so strong. The eyes black and black and black. Could it see her.

Jason got out of the car. Chrissy stared at it. Her eyes were pricking with tears from the pain now carving up her shoulder. Her armpits were drenched. Ash fell to her jeans because she could not keep her hand from trembling. Could it see her. Jason didn’t understand. He couldn’t—it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know. Could it. It could. Jason opened her car door and Chrissy saw the thing’s head turn. It had to use its whole neck. He put his hand on her good shoulder. He made like to unbuckle her seatbelt. He only stopped when she screamed. He said, “Oh my God—“ but he could not be heard further over her screaming and she was screaming because she’d just stubbed out the Virginia Slim in the center of her thigh.

---

 There was always somebody she didn’t know hanging around her house, so Chrissy at first sight didn’t pay the man in black any mind. She’d descended for two diet Cokes and a handful of baby carrots, which she liked to keep in a bowl and nibble down to the cores while she read. She caught sight of him in her exiled living room on the way upstairs through the back hallway via the staff staircase. By chance she’d had her weekly shower so her hair was clean and braided. She wore white Soffee shorts rolled extra high and tall fuzzy socks pulled up past her calves, and a baggy sweatshirt of softest blue depicting Tweety Bird wearing a nightcap and slippers.

She would never forget that part.

The man was stood facing the massive painting which hung over the fireplace, itself big enough to roast Chrissy on a spit. His manner was sure in a way which spoke of money, but his boots were filthy in a way which spoke of work. His hands were clasped behind his back, a contemplative Y-shape which was echoed about two feet up against the nape of his neck, where a spill of dark curls was gathered in a low ponytail. Between two fingers he pinched the brim of an old black hat trailing silver aglets. Actually his whole outfit was technically black, but such subtly variant shades faded by sun and time that Cosmo would differentiate them as Charcoal or Cinder Gray. He rocked a little on his heels and whistled a song she did not recognize. He was tall enough to clear the fireplace mantle and leaned forward close enough to touch his nose to the canvas.

“You’re an art lover.”

At the sound of Jason’s voice Chrissy startled so badly she almost dropped her Cokes. The man in black turned to the front door, where Jason was taking off his spurs. Chrissy saw the back of the man’s head flick almost imperceptibly to Jason’s store-clean cowboy hardware, and she could not say how but she knew he was clocking how they gleamed.

Her mouth felt strange. She frowned. What was this guy’s problem. Of course new spurs would gleam. Because they were NEW!

Jason rushed forward, all hospitality, and the man in black greeted him. The two men shook. “You must be Wayne’s nephew,” Jason said. “Eddie.”

The man must have smiled because his voice was warm when he spoke. “That would be correct.”

Jason gestured towards the canvas once more. “You’re a fan of Tintern’s?” The man in black—it felt absurd to think of him as Ed or Eddie, that was a name for uncles and talking horses on television—shifted from one foot to another. “I’m afraid I don’t know the man.”

Jason laughed graciously. “It’s alright, I’m afraid I’m putting on airs.” He pushed his hair off his brow in practiced self-deprecation. “He’s the artist, is all.”

The man nodded slowly. “Is that so.” 

Jason gestured towards it, encouraged. “Yes, he wasn’t appreciated fully in his time. But we’ve been collectors for years. The truth of the American West wasn’t something most wealthy folks at the auction houses in New York or Paris were ready for until recently. Frankly, I still don’t know if they are, to tell the God’s honest truth.” He laughed again. Chrissy winced. Jason always got homespun around the new help. It was embarrassing. 

The man nodded in quiet understanding. “The truth.” He looked up again at the painting. Contained within the nine-foot canvas was a grim-faced man standing against a clouded blue sky and wild red rocks. His shirt was stained with sweat and grime. All across his expression was thirst, desperate and lean. Maybe a few months ago he had been young, but now he was aged by hardscrabble circumstance. A thin stream trickled by his feet but instead of slaking his own need, the man knelt before a speckled horse who drank gratefully from his cupped hands. Far in the distance circled vultures.

 “It’s meant to depict a scout ahead of the Powell expedition to map the Colorado river,” Jason explained. “That was about 1870 or so. TIntern couldn’t sell it in his lifetime for love or money. Apparently he tried to offer it up as collateral in a game of cards and took a bullet across the cheek for trying. Now we have buyers from as far as Tokyo asking after it.” Again, the man in black nodded. Jason opened his mouth to share further information when the man shifted his hat forward and used it to point at the painted horse.

“I’m sure the anachronism is part of what makes it so valuable.” He spoke evenly and with interest, as if to a peer.

Jason’s brows bunched together. “I’m—” But he recovered like the professional he was born to be and smiled again. “Like that stamp with the upside down airplane, you mean. A collector’s flaw.” 

The man titled his head in consideration and his voice was warmer still. “Something like that.” Jason took his hands wide in handshake congeniality. “Please, I’m all ears.” 

The brim of the black hat drew a line from the scout’s cupped hands to the horse’s nose. “Appaloosas didn’t make their way to that part of the country until after the Nez Perce conflict. Which as you know was–”

And the man paused here, minutely. Chrissy went hot all over. It sounded like politeness. It WASN’T politeness. He was making fun of Jason. He knew Jason did not know the answer. The man went on. “1877.”

Jason laughed his best-sport laugh. “He IS an art lover! Or history, anyway.” The man in black swayed on his heels once again in total ease. “Just Appaloosas, actually. Call me an aficionado.” Jason clapped his shoulder and once again Chrissy saw the man’s head bob microscopically but unmistakably in an expression of contempt.

How dare he. In Jason’s own house! This…this…this hired hand!!!

“Well, somewhere in Japan, the Sakomoto Gallery’s ears are burning.” Again, that bob. Chrissy felt her chest grow hotter. She tried to go far away outside herself, like usual. But she could not, somehow. She was rooted so that the blowback from the man’s scorn cleft the cavity of her chest time and time again. What the fuck!!! He was being so obvious!!! How could Jason not feel it?!

“You’d sell it?” The man’s voice was so even as to be offensive. It didn’t matter if that didn’t make any sense! Chrissy knew what this meant, OK?!

Jason shook his head. “Never. My father gave it to us as a wedding gift,” he said solemnly. “It’s about sacrifice.”

The man turned on the back foot. “Of course. Your wife.” Jason nodded, man to man. “Yes. She’ll be upstairs." 

“How long has it been?”

“It’ll be two months in October.”

“What else have you tried?”


“Oh Lord. What haven’t we tried. Physical therapy. Sports medicine. Our pastor. Her mother. Homeopathic doctors. Headshrinkers. Everything.” 

And at that the man in black turned and saw her. She could not move. His eyes were without light and held her fast. She saw him take in the whole of her with that cocky hateful steadiness until he met her ruined face and he flinched.

The thing about her scar was it stayed pale and dead and cold. No matter how hot she got everywhere else. No matter how the back of her neck might prickle with the slow-dawning understanding of his revulsion. The man was still staring but his momentary loss of control broke his spell. She moved quietly from his sight back to her den where she tried to stop shaking.

He stayed for supper because that’s what everybody who came to look at Chrissy did. They ate grouse with fried sage which Laura had shot and dressed that morning. The man in black said it was very fine and took seconds at Laura’s insistence. After supper, Laura and Jason exchanged a look and Chrissy’s husband excused himself to make a few final calls on California time. Then Laura asked Eddie to join her in her study in the east wing. She did not need to invite Chrissy because Chrissy knew she must follow. 

Laura’s study was only put into employ during the handful of weeks she stayed on the Carver property, but she insisted enough value was extracted during those short jaunts to justify its perpetual existence. The room had once been used by Jason’s mother as a sewing studio and was half-heartedly offered to Chrissy first, but she said she’d rather have a walk-in closet, which she got. It had three mechanized boot carousels and a white lacquer vanity just like Lee Ann Womack had in US Weekly ! Chrissy thought that was a pretty good deal!

The office was dominated by a massive desk like a man’s, which in turn was framed on all sides by custom-fit dark oak cabinetry. Within the shelves behind panes of glass were the tapes. Hundreds of them. Lined up like inverted piano keys, bars of black with broken up with smaller labels of white upon which were scrawled in even penmanship Laura’s code. WY.08.23.88 CO.06.07.77 ND.04.12.81 and so on. A television was inset in the cabinets directly behind the desk, so Laura could turn in her leather green banker’s chair and watch without disruption. The television was large enough that a person standing yards away from the desk could clearly see the image, which of course was the entire point.

Like a bad-influence friend who cajoled you to steal from your mother’s purse and then fled when her wrath descended, the passenger vanished if Laura was near. So when Chrissy abandoned her body this time, she left nothing behind. Upon crossing the threshold into the office, she felt the now-familiar drift up up up and out until she found herself perched on the rim of the office’s Tiffany pendant lamp. Up here she was only three inches tall and could swing her feet pleasantly over the warm colored glass and watch her body from below. Up here she did not have any room for feelings whatsoever. Up here a dewdrop could satisfy her for days. This evening, she saw her empty body standing very straight in front of the television. The body had changed into a new pink blouse mail-ordered from the Limited in a vodka fog and a long denim church skirt. It wore her competition sapphire studs and Revlon’s Pink in the Afternoon along her cupid’s bow and three layers of Great Lash. Tweety Bird was banished to the bottom of the fucking hamper where Chrissy remembered hoping that he would suffocate and die!!! Overall it could not be denied that the body looked neat and presentable. Next to her body the arrogant man looked like a wad of hair from the shower drain. She watched herself sniff proudly and stand a little taller.

Laura entered the room last as she always did. She wore her denim belted so both the waspishness of her waist and the CHAMPION EL PASO 1977 buckle could not pass without notice. She took the long route to her desk so her visitor would have to see her trophy rack including her twelve-point elk rack and the mounted head of what she claimed was the last red wolf in Texas. She walked past Chrissy’s body and the man to run her fingers (one and a quarter inch, French tip, square end, real and unchipped since 1983) over the cassettes before stopping to withdraw WY.08.17.93-X.

“They tell me,” she said. “You’re some kind of miracle worker.” Her mother’s tone was flirtatious in its challenge. The man shifted in his worn boots. “Wayne says I’m just an untangler of rope.”

Laura smirked at this because nothing, actually, had ever surprised her in her entire life. She took the channel changer from where she’d holstered it in her belt and although she was facing them both she only addressed the man. “Let’s see about all that.”

Up on her Tiffany shell, Chrissy pulled her tiny feet up beneath her and pressed her arms around her middle. She wished she had wings to wrap herself in. Or even just a sock to crawl into. Her vacant body did not budge as the TV spat into staticky life. On the screen, a strawberry-blonde girl in a spangled shirt sat astride a palomino fifteen hands high. She wore a white cowboy hat with a diadem of Swarovski crystal set across the brim, and cradled an armful of red roses bound in pink paper. The pair stood in the dirt ring of a rodeo arena at dusk as the emcee over the loudspeaker thanked the departing crowds for coming and reminded them that God Blessed These United States. Photographers jockeyed for position and she met their lenses at all angles with her bright and effortless smile.

Chrissy watched as her body ran its tongue, once, over new teeth.

Flashbulbs popped and the palomino’s ears went flat against its skull as the girl pressed a soothing hand to its neck. The horse pawed once at the dirt but seemed to settle. A child approached the girl with a bouquet of balloons clutched in his fat fist. All around laughed in affection at the lovestruck little boy. He grew shy at their teasing, but his own father pushed him forward. The girl on horseback’s face grew soft and she leaned down to accept the offered gift. But the child’s grip was not steady and he released the balloons too early; the horse startled as the plastic flew up and around its face. The girl’s smile vanished into taut concern, and tugged the reins to the left and the right as her horse tossed its neck while the child shrieked and jumped in disappointment. The horse grew uneasier still. The camera now followed the balloons’ flight up to a rigging of blazing arena lights which burst them with a noise like gunfire upon contact. Then, screams. The camera whipped back to the girl but it could not find her. All it could see were photographers fleeing and the father backing away in fright with his wailing child secure in his arms. There were intermittent flurries of color as terrified passersby blocked the camera’s eye. When the view was clear it could be seen that the palomino was bucking now, brutal heartless spasms. The girl did not scream because she was not able, so bridled she was by terror. An arena hand tried to intervene only to take a hoof to the torso which caved with a crunch of splintering bone as the girl landed with a dull sandbag thud on the arena’s dirt floor. The girl tried to roll to safety but was not swift enough. The wind was knocked from her lungs. The palomino reared, its eyes roiling white like boiled eggs, and made to bring the tonnage of its entire body upon her when Laura paused the tape. 

“I think,” she said coolly. “You get the idea.”

“Yes ma’am,” said the man in black.

“Can you see her error?” Laura switched the television off as if the man in black might sneak a backwards glance and cheat.

“Yes ma’am.”There was a heavy silence. Chrissy’s body did not move and had not moved for the last two minutes. From her perch, Chrissy’s real heart palpitated in winded bursts. She trailed her teeny toes in circles through the heavy dust along the lamp’s edge. If she had a single strawberry and a cotton ball for a pillow, she could live up here alone for a hundred years. Laura, her manicured hand still holding the remote, waved it in a little gesture indicating contrary to appearances I am not, in fact, getting any younger.

“Ma’am, I’d prefer to discuss this once I’m formally engaged with Mrs. Carver.”

“Your engagement will be contingent on your answer,” replied Laura in her ten percent and a share of the first-dollar gross voice.

The man in black flicked his eyes to Chrissy’s dead mannequin body. Chrissy felt an ungrounded shock surge the tips of her fingers and hair as the foolish thought seized her: he knows you are not in there. And perhaps she was just being hysterical in her imaginings but she would have sworn before God and Christ that she saw his lightless gaze dart to the Tiffany lamp before he answered, “She forgot her hindquarter yields.”

With a foul jolt, Chrissy felt herself jammed back in her ill-fitting body.  She almost gasped from the violation but she had no air because she could not breathe. She felt the cold thickness of the scar across her cheek. The phantom shrapnel of her shattered collarbone. The brute heft of that hoof upon her body. All gone in a second but within that second there were lifetimes. A tear blurred her vision and she wiped it away before remembering the Great Lash. Shit. Shit shit shit. But it was too late. Her finger was streaked soot-black and without thinking she’d smeared it on her lovely new blouse. She swallowed. It hurt. She wanted to howl. She wanted to crumble. 

How fucking dare he.

Laura smiled in approval. “That’s right. Her basic horsemanship. All this could have been prevented if she had kept her seat. But tiaras and photographers are mighty distracting. Aren’t they, Chrissybelle?”

Helplessly Chrissy said, “Yes ma’am.”

“I think perhaps we’ve been trying to gild the lily, as they say, with regards to our diagnosis and our recovery. I think a simple regimen of fundamentals alongside whatever Mr. Munson recommends will be just the ticket. Don’t you agree?”

Chrissy said, “Yes ma’am.”

Laura’s smile grew. “Wonderful. I love when things are easy. Mr. Munson, there will be the matter of what resources you need–” 

“Ma’am, with all due respect. I haven’t said I’ll have her.”

The degradation melted hot and slow, like wax, branding a thermal trail from Chrissy’s throat to her breasts to her navel. If stripped naked at this moment, her body would be forked with shameful red. She did not look at him. How could she. How ACTUALLY could she. Laura blinked in response before shaking off her own disapproval and switching into a higher Manager gear.

“Of course, we haven’t discussed your fee. How rude of me.” 

Chrissy could not look at him but she could look at his boots which tapped their toes once in annoyance. “That’s not the salient point, ma’am.”

OK first she’d have to remember where the dictionary was located but once she did she was looking up salient and adding it to her list of beef with this guy!!!

 “Are you talking about principals, Mr. Munson?” There was the twist of a laugh in Laura’s voice, which the boots REALLY did not like.

“I hope it wouldn’t be amusing if I was, ma’am.”

“Twenty-five thousand.” Chrissy looked up at the Tiffany lamp and concentrated with all her will that she might return. She failed. She remained welded to her broken, scarred, stupid body. The man must have shaken his head because Laura said, “Fifty thousand.” Laura lit a cigarette with her engraved silver lighter and the mouthwatering scent of a Virginia Slim teased Chrissy’s nostrils.

“Seventy-five thousand with room and board included.” Chrissy couldn’t help but startle. That was not Laura’s to offer. This was not her home. Laura didn’t notice. She was leaning forward on her elbows, her blue eyes glinting. She loved negotiation. That this was a one-sided negotiation with what might as well have been a six foot something plinth of black malachite dampened her enthusiasm not one speck. The hunt was her place of power.

“That’s mighty generous of you, ma’am.” In his tone was buried poison. And yet Laura did not seem to hear it! Was her mother on pills?! Aside from the usuals?!?! Chrissy felt almost faint with dislike. That he found this all so beneath him that not even seventy-five thousand dollars could tempt him. That not even for such a sum would he have her. 

“She’s worth far more to this family than that,” Laura said as she tapped her cigarette into an ashtray made from a ram’s horn she’d claimed in the Badlands. This, Chrissy noted with whatever irony she could summon, was calculated to sound like a statement borne of love.

“What does Mrs. Carver think?” He still did not look at her to ask it. 

She considered resisting but felt the blade of her mother’s attention against her neck and folded. “I’d like for all this to be over,” she said, in a desperate grasp at honesty. And because she was weak and stupid and failed herself in her body over and over she dribbled out the horrible climax, “Sir.”

He looked at her then.

---

The ride back up the ridge was long and the dark sky threatened thunder, so the man agreed to stay overnight in one of the far outbuildings which came furnished with a guest’s toothbrush and slippers embroidered with the Carver ranch brand. Curly, helpful Jessie drove him there. From her window Chrissy watched the man hold Jessie’s flashlight and offer her a hand so she might step more easily into one of the property’s four-seat rangers. The beam of the flashlight bobbed as if the bearer was laughing.

Chrissy got to work.

The lingerie drawer in her Lee Ann Womack walk-in closet had gone untouched for weeks, but the housekeeper had refreshed the lavender sachets on their usual schedule so the garments still smelled floral and sweet. The passenger rejected a periwinkle teddy and two garter belt sets before settling on a peach negligee trimmed in lace which skimmed the tops of her thighs. She wore no underwear. Her toenails, thank God, she’d done two nights before during an encore screening of A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story. She sat at the vanity and ejected her beloved Judds from the stereo built right into the wall, swapping them out for “Black Velvet” which was the sexiest music she owned.

Her hair she scrunched with hairspray and teased from its braid until it submitted to the suggestion of texture which she fluffed as best she could around her shoulders. She lined her lips with MAC Spice (a dressing-room gift from a Canadian rider she’d met at the Calgary Stampede) and slicked them plump with Fetish gloss, the name of which still caused her to blush. She debated for a solid minute if she’d wear her diamond or not, but decided at the last minute to keep it on because she thought he’d like it. She sprayed Sunflowers by Elizabeth Arden on her pulse points, her wrists, and (warm all over at the implication, but the passenger insisted) between her thighs. At last she stood up and examined the effect. If she swept her waves across her cheek like Veronica Lake, the scar would be obscured. Her hand shook as she brushed the veil of hair forward.

If she hurried, she’d catch him just before he arrived. For one second she knelt, awkward, amongst the throw pillows piled in orderly pyramids on the bed. Thinking about seducing somebody was like thinking about breathing–if you had to get deliberate about it, the whole thing got fucked beyond all social repair. She felt herself go all weird and newborn for a second, hobbling around on her knees as she tried pose after pose before remembering that (RIGHT! Duh!) he was just a man and thus didn’t want to see you try very hard at all. So she fell to the side with her legs swept under her like a sexy shot deer and waited for his footsteps.

She heard the flattering break in his stride once he saw her. The hitch of breath in his chest.

“Chrissy. What–”

She traced her fingers along the bodice lace which offered her viewer the illusion of cleavage. “Hi,” she said. Yes girl! That’s it! Keep it short and sweet!

He shut the door quietly behind him. His face spoke of soft disbelief. “Baby,” he said. “Are you sure?”

She parted her legs.

He sort of lost his gravity after that, hunching partway to the ground as he attempted to pull off boot, sock, jeans, and shirt all in the same go. He nearly got stuck halfway through because he forgot his belt, and she felt like laughing at him but didn’t because that would puff her hair off her face and expose the rigid seam along her cheek. When he made it to the bed, she traced her acrylics (yellow with little gold daisies) through the waxen grooves of his hair. He wet his lips once with a tentative tongue and asked if she was sure. She brushed her nose against the sculpted line of his shoulder and inhaled. “I want it,” she whispered. “I want it so bad, honey.”

He never grabbed her. Not once. He always held her with a regular firmness, practiced in its power and pressure. She used to get a kick out of wilting into it and watching the stony paternalism he used sometimes on scary work calls flood his sky-blue eyes. That was as close as he ever got.

She sagged now so he was forced to hold her up, and she made sure her copper hair floofed in soft clouds over his bare arms before she gazed up at him through her lashes. “You’re so strong, honey, it makes me…” The passenger cut her off there because it knew there was nothing Chrissy could say which would be more flattering than what Jason supplied with his own mind. It was right! Jason drew her close and rasped, “I know, baby, I know,” into her ear which was like oh really Jason? Do you? But whatever!

She worked a warble into her voice. “Give it to me?” she whispered. Needy and demanding. It turned out brattiness had thousands of uses!  “Please, honey…” The gambit worked! Some combination of six weeks of abstinence and the negligee and the call of Chrissy’s poor little fragile body overwrote Jason’s fundamental chivalry so that he seized her by the shoulders and tossed her onto the bed. She almost squealed with glee but imagined she was on camera and stopped herself. He dropped muted, censored kisses up her neck as he whispered into her ear that she was still beautiful, she’d always be beautiful to him. Chrissy cooed in response to his attentions, a series of rote vocal exercises she hoped would rile him up further still. Sometimes she had to GASP like she was shocked beyond all imagining that he'd like, cupped her boob or whatever. In response he could be counted on to do something fun like push her flat against the mattress for a few seconds, but she had to hold this trick in reserve somewhat because its efficacy was directly correlated to how infrequently she deployed it.

He continued to stamp kisses up and down her ribs with bureaucratic regularity. His grip was now limp and probably what he would categorize as “sensitive”. She felt herself going cool. She pressed one palm flat against his chest.  

“Poor baby,” she murmured. Jason continued to lick her like she was an envelope to be sealed. She raised her voice a little. “Poor baby.”

Into the perfume of her hair Jason crooned, “Yeah, my poor baby—” but Chrissy cut him off. “No, you poor baby. Poor poor baby.”

And Jason said, “What?”

She began to tongue him slowly, along his jaw and up to his reddening earlobes. “Poor baby,” she echoed, “He was so rude to you.”

“Sorry, honey, I’m–who?” Jason kept trying to pull back to look in her eyes but she arched her chest against his so he could feel her nipples through the silk and even as he protested his confusion he slid one hand up to grope her chest.

“That awful man, in our home–“ She began to grind her torso slowly into Jason’s hand, feeling crackling fingers of heat begin to tease up her thighs. “He was so arrogant, and and a bad houseguest, and—” Jason’s gaze was darkening rapidly, which was great because it meant he would be too horny to notice if she repeated herself because she herself was fogging over so quickly she couldn’t be fucked to think of a synonym, “So ARROGANT, Jason, he thinks he's better than us but he’s not, and he knows it, that’s why he has to be so….” She didn’t finish here because Jason, perhaps having had enough of this talk, slid a finger between her legs. He found her oiled and ready. He chuckled and tried to say something like, “You missed me, huh—” but Chrissy cantered over him, “So rude, baby, like an animal or something, but don’t worry, I’m here to make it all better–”

There was a pause. The minute slurp of his finger withdrawing.

“Chrissy,” he said.

She looked up at him with her biggest dumbest bluest babydoll eyes and blinked.

“I’m OK. I didn’t have a problem today.” She nodded: goo goo gah gah! Jason wasn’t deterred. Shit. He frowned. “Are you OK?”

She rolled onto her stomach and flipped up the negligee which ended the conversation.

---

 In the morning, Chrissy peeled herself free from Jason’s arms and went downstairs for the first breakfast she’d wanted in weeks. Maybe she would have four bites of oatmeal! Maybe even with a sprinkle of brown sugar! These happy thoughts were slaughtered by the sight of Laura sitting at the huge wooden kitchen island. She gazed at Chrissy evenly over the edge of her coffee cup.

 “You’ll start with that man today,” she said. “You’ll get your seat back and separately he’ll work with her and perhaps in a few days she’ll allow herself to bear you again.” 

 Sometimes Chrissy felt as if a thousand rubber hoses were set in taps along the column of her spine, out of which all her happiness and courage were slowly and systematically drained into vessels for her mother’s own use. “Mama,” she whispered. “Please.” The passenger nowhere to be found. Just her and the pain. Mama and ma’am. The two-sided coin which dictated her fortune. Then. Now. And always. 

“Chrissy, you cannot possibly expect me to sit here while my only daughter lets herself wither and rot. You have a gift which you are wasting because you are allowing yourself to indulge in the pleasures of your fear and your victimhood. You have allowed yourself to forget what responsibility feels like. To your family, your craft, your career, and your husband.” Laura was capable of delivering a speech like this without frowning or raising her voice. Every syllable was as clipped and official as a paycheck. To argue with such bright efficiency made you sound insane.

“I just need more time, Mama.”

“Does Khamsin get more time?”

Chrissy went still.

“A quarter of a million at auction for that one because daddy had to give you your own paddle to play big girl. I never spent so much on a competition ride in my life. I didn’t need to. But you swore you loved her. That you’d make us proud. How does this–” and she summed Chrissy up with the twirl of a finger, “Show love. How does this make us proud.” 

Chrissy could not say. Laura went on.  

“I mean in a way, Chrissy, I agree with you. It IS ridiculous. It IS distasteful. Frankly, I hate the thought of allowing this….snake handler into our lives. This ‘common clay’ folk wisdom nonsense. It’s extremely undignified. But what choice do I have? You ruined your horse. You ruined yourself. People say this man’s only fit for the bottom of the barrel. What would you call this?”  

Chrissy tried. She could hardly raise her head. Her new teeth garbled every sound she tried to make. But it had to be said that she tried.

“Mama. I can’t go back out there. Please don’t make me.” Of course she was no longer hungry. Of course she was going to vomit after this.

 Laura cocked her head once like taking aim. Then she sighed and set down her cup. “Alright.” 

Chrissy’s eyes met her mother’s, which were even and cool. How did a person react when they got what they wanted? Chrissy’s mind whirled, trying to accommodate the single ray of hope warming something which had been cold inside of her for a very very long time. Laura took a sip of coffee. “You’ll just need to get the money back.” 

The hope snuffed out. Maybe she said, what ?

“I paid him half up front. Thirty-eight thousand dollars. I understand he’s already turned down another offer. But you can’t go back out there. You said it yourself. So all you need to do is go find this man and tell him to give you the money back because you decided you’d rather be a coward.”

Chrissy floated. She said nothing.

“It shouldn’t be difficult for you. After all, it’s hardly what you spend on clothes for a single summer.” Laura knew this because Jason supplied her with Chrissy’s charge card statements at her request. “To him, of course, it’s more money than he’ll make in a year. But I’m sure he’ll understand. He saw the tape. He knows.” 

Laura stood up now and Chrissy heard the clack of her bootheels across the poisonwood floors. “If I make more coffee, Chrissybelle, would you drink some?”

Chrissy probably sat with her mother and had a cup of coffee. It was hard to say for sure. Then she went upstairs and puked sour black liquid into the powder room toilet instead of the ensuite so Jason wouldn’t ask any stupid questions. Then she brushed her teeth and got dressed. God. He was probably in the fucking stables. At least they would be empty because Jason was out taking some German investors for a trail ride. She hoped they all fell into a ravine and got eaten by marmots. 

As she drove, Chrissy felt her slow-mounting rage peel away the numbness in shivers and stripes. That arrogant pig. Taking her mother’s check. Shackling them together without her consent like some fucking pervert.  It wasn’t even her mother’s money, probably, it was JASON’s, Laura was just a notarized signatory on the account—which of course made the whole thing fucking WORSE! Jason and Laura and this motherfucker in all black—oh and by the way, who even WORE all black? Fucking Johnny Cash? That fucking—whatever, guy from that movie with the killer cowboy robots who was also in The King and I ? This lowlife dick-swinger coming into HER HOUSE with his shit-don’t-stink performance of rock’n’roll cool– no fucking clue, OF COURSE, of how actual real working people dressed, his whole leather daddy swagger as much of a costume as those spurs he had sneered at! Yeah! YEAH! That was good! Oh and BY THE WAY, it wasn’t as if the check was going to fucking bounce!!! He turned his nose up at her but not at her fucking money, apparently? Well GOOD LUCK EDWARD because Chrissy was going to MARCH IN and wipe that SMIRK OFF HIS FACE and emerge victorious with cash in hand!!! WHO WAS THE TROOPER, THEN, HUH!!

This head of steam lasted her exactly until she got to the barn door and saw them. Actually she heard them first. Their brazen laughter. His face was not haughty this time. It was warm and cracked with dimples and lines, like a well-worn saddle. His hair was liberated from its ponytail and fell past his shoulders. He looked deeply amused with Jessie who was trying to get her own hat down from a high-placed hook. Dimly, through the teakettle whistle rising between her temples, Chrissy understood that he must have placed it there because the hook was too tall for her to reach. It was like. A joke. Between them. Or something. Already they were joking. It had been less than twenty-four hours. 

With each jump, the moonbounce curves of her body jiggled and swayed. She was pretending to be mad. He wasn’t pretending. He was happy. This was teasing. Or like flirting. Or whatever. The man in black didn’t flinch at the sight of Jessie’s whole, healthy, milkfed face. He didn’t have to. She performed irritation but if she was actually irritated she would have screamed. Or hit. Instead she jumped, her thick arms stretched high over her head to better showcase her body. Later on Chrissy would understand THAT was what did it. That Jessie had the privilege of anger as a game. Something warm and contained. A safe preamble to friendship or possibly even sex. A toothless playtime which could build and not destroy. On and on the joke went until dumb stupid bimbo Jessie was pink with exertion. She posed with her hands on her hips and her tits stuck out like a wet nurse offering a feed. At which point the man in black reached over her head, plucked the hat down, and plopped it on her blonde coils. She rolled her eyes and said on her way out something like some people actually had to work around here, did he know. He said he did. 

Chrissy stepped out. 

The passenger stepped in. 

---

Eddie paused leaving the stables to write his first good sentence in three days. The dry spell was—he always told himself—a product of the move back to town and thus temporary, but they never failed to make him nervous because he only ever wrote with the pen or (delicious hubris) typewriter keys via the swirls and whorls of his disintegrating fingertips. However this morning what with Saint Jessica of the Vacuum-Sealed Levis flipping her flaxen tresses left and right, and last night’s securing of The Check thank you very much—which he’d only had to haggle for right in front of the girl’s face for thirty fucking seconds; Wayne could never hear of this mercenary rudeness, but in any case castles approacheth—it came to him in a big swoop of cozy obviousness: Antares could not be persuaded to leave his Wanted poster for some few minutes as it was the first he had seen his own face in three years. Cool!

He canted his hip against the stall, pulled his Sam Spade gumshoe spiral from his back pocket, and wrote it out beneath his shopping list for the horrible empty soulless white Carver Point guest house fridge. Eggs. Jerky. Olives. Jam . The great American novel. (Somebody had to!) And so his head was down when she came in.

“Is this where you do it?”

He looked up a little startled because her approach had been silent. Chrissy Carver, in pale blue jeans, the hems as crisp as untouched paper across her boots, and a blouse of archangel white. Arms crossed tight. Her face that split diamond.

“Sorry?”

She would not yet quite step inside. Her expression was perched strangely on her face, off-kilter like her shoulder had been jostled: water just below boiling. “You and her,” she said. “The…sexy stable contingent of the Carver Mining Group. Like a—a little union. Like the teamsters.”

A drop of some weird liquid—mercury, or cave water off a stalactite—began to trickle down his back. “...Jessie?” he asked, as if this would clarify a single thing.

“This is my husband’s barn.” Chrissy flicked an imaginary lock of hair—she was in a ponytail—off her shoulder with her tiny right hand, her glossy grown-up nails. “I understand it must cost a lot to restrain yourself but if you could make a little effort next time, at least while you’re on the clock? Thanks.”

To the indifferent stars five seconds ago Eddie would have said that an inundation of three hundred percent more syllables from her mouth than when last they were side by side, in that arctic office with the dead red wolf, would have been enough. “What effort is that, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am,” she said at once. One heel ground itself into the dirt, the underside of her boot arcing clockwise, counterclockwise. “I came out here to—to express my gratitude that you’d take me on, Mister Munson, so you can imagine my displeasure at finding my mother’s newest employee instead sizing up Jessie’s ass.”

The quick searing heat of a slap bloomed between his ears. That he’d been sporadically seasonally employed on this very ranch for years, and that Jessie’s ass defied Western mathematics, seemed not the point. He flipped his notebook shut and put it back in his pocket so Chrissy would have to watch him stay cool. “You got a coarse turn of mind, Mrs. Carver.”

She stepped inside. “No, Eddie, it’s what I just saw. Seventy-five thousand’s pretty good but it’s not carte blanche to fuck my help.”

She’d now named every member of her family minus daddy. Check check check. “Not sure what you thought you saw from the proverbial high horse ma’am but it wasn’t me sizing up nor fucking.”

An almighty chuff from those bruised lungs. “I’m not imagining. You were—you were arrogant with Jason yesterday, you were arrogant with my mother, and now you’re being— uppity with me right in front of my—”

Eddie laughed, which was bitchy, but she’d forcibly regressed him via Wayne’s argot for scolding colts. “I thought me and your husband got on fine. You disagree?”

She sneered, actually sneered, cranked her lip up like a doe-eyed cartoon kitten offered a tattered dog toy. “Oh, all that bullshit about Appaloosas and anachronisms, trying to make him feel, like, stupid in his own house—”

Eddie’s free right arm, the one not braced with now-ludicrous nonchalance against the wall, went to brace the small of his back in a pantomime of Well how about that? “Eavesdropping?”

She covered her shame so quickly that he only caught it evanescing at the corner of her eyes. “It’s my house! ”

He looked up into the rafters to buy precious seconds in which to think what to do as her rattled footsteps brought her closer. The air was rushing past his face and this was what he could control from its depths—the siren call of the mountainside. “Yes it is. Rights to the intimate knowledge of every corner.”

“Put your hair up while you’re working,” she said over him even as he was still hitting the R. She walked right up to him presumably so she could lower her voice to a waspy chirr. In what felt like a stroke, probably, Eddie smelled lavender and recognized the curled lip and tone: Chrissy doing Laura. “This isn’t an AC/DC concert, and you need to rein in your fucking ego. And you aren’t gonna speak to me for the next six weeks like you’re speaking to me now, got it? Or we’re gonna have problems.” Hands on her hips like Lady Boss Barbie. “Do you understand? Or do you need to—to grope my tits before you listen to me?”

“Ma’am,” said Eddie calmly, lowering his shoulders, “I can tell by the tone of your voice and the wildness in your eyes that you’re undergoing what psychologists call a mental episode. Due no doubt to the severe physical nature of your past few months and the separation from your emotional calling ie. your horse. As such I will not respond with raised hand nor voice. If you’ll allow me I will instead escort you back to your domicile and put you to bed. Apropos of nothing I’ve been eyeing it and I’d like to brush out your hair.”

“Thank you for understanding,” said Chrissy Carver. “I’ve been distressed for such a time that I’ve forgotten how to articulate my anger. You are a kind soul to see beyond my harsh words to the tenderness of my soul.”

“No trouble,” said Eddie. 

Of course such a fork of lightning missed both their destinies and what he really said was, “Lady, are you outta your goddamn mind?” and her huge eyes went huger.

“You can’t speak to me like that!” she shouted, to which Eddie responded with Bondesque insouciance I’ll speak to a stuck-up rodeo queen however I fuckin please at which point Chrissy shoved him in the chest. Both hands, solid stance, sure as a kick. Due more to real force than surprise his shoulder blade hit the wall, and Chrissy stepped with him—even in her boots her ponytail barely reached his shoulders—and shoved him again, then just pushed at his trapped collarbones as if through to the grass outside. Ragdoll-loose and stunned Eddie stared. “I’m not a fucking stable girl. Is that what you think you signed on for? A barnful of girls lined up down here to suck your dick?”

Her voice had grown louder and louder and could very well have drawn passersby though no one came but she herself was also gone. The blood in her body, of which she could not have much to spare, was almost blistering under her cheeks. She was panting, armpits damp. If she could still see him at all then maybe later she could describe to Eddie his own expression. 

“No,” he said. Vacantly he was aware his hands were up as if he were being robbed.

“You’re hard,” she said. “Right now. Right in front of me.”

Jesus Christ Himself knew Eddie couldn’t look. He sort of shook his head. If he screamed the man’s name, could he get Jason down here? His wife was having an event.

…actually no. No Jason. Just stroke.

“You’re disgusting,” Chrissy said more quietly. Waves of singed lavender. Eddie’s heart like the tectonic divide. “You can milk as much money out of us as you want. But you’re still just a dog. That’s what you’ve shown me, Eddie.” 

She stepped her right foot a half-inch closer and unseen as they kept their eyes on each other her hand cupped his crotch, right over his jeans. “If this is all you can understand.” 

He did not move. She had fixed upon him such baleful blue eyes as the drowning sailor saw above rising water. Her knees bent. When her mouth was level with her hand she withdrew her pale fingers and licked the taut seam at his zipper.

His cock as she got it out was not as stoic as, say, his eyebrows. Chrissy Carver’s lips were chapped and that pearlescent pink tongue traced over them before she pressed her mouth—her mouth, her mouth, dry rose petals, a shattering moonstone, was this actually fucking happening?—to the tip of his fucking dick. She lapped it with the flat of her tongue then opened her mouth and sank down upon it.

As calmly as he could Eddie put his hands to the boards behind his hips and watched. Solemnly bore witness to this poor woman’s disintegration oh shit, holy shit she was bobbing her head. He could feel individual molecules of blood rush from the problem-solving lobe of his brain (wasn’t it right behind your forehead?) down between his legs into this thing warm inside her. At once he was distant from and pressed right up against the glass door of his thoughts and so both vaguely and in painful crystal clarity he wondered should she be opening her jaw this wide so soon in her PT.

She pumped her tongue up and down the underside of his dick. Her forehead glimpsed through her feathery bangs was as tense as when she was shouting. Eddie did his level best not to dissolve, fragmentate, or abstractify but God help him: black mascara on her eyelashes. Her scar ghostly white against the flush. She was radiant like a cinder, her mouth hot with trapped air. Actually and not to be particular but her mouth was kind of dry. Actually it was not excruciatingly comfortable. Actually it was really a lot uncomfortable nope nope abort—

“Uh,” Eddie said, “Mrs. Carver.”

She made a curt mouth-too-full noise as if interrupted eating that vibrated up his cock. His hand hovered over the crown of her skull, checked by manners instilled over two point five decades to not touch ladies’ heads. 

“Ma’am,” he said. “Miss. Uh. Chrissy.”

She retracted (it went THWLP, like an extracted finger) except the head stayed in her mouth and she scowled upwards. Breathing against him. Truly it was indisputable that this girl was kneeling at his feet.

“Thank you but I think this isn’t,” he attempted. The tip of his dick was nestled in the middle of her bottom lip, sagging it down, showing her bottom row of teeth, one two three four. “Uh I think maybe this isn’t the best—maybe not the best, uh—”

He meant time (TIME for the love of Christ) but Princess of the World took it at once and obviously as “...blow job of my life.” She heaved a colossal huff, the cheerleader forced to put out, and stuck out her tongue. His hand retreated from even the halo of her hair and she thrust her head down with prejudice. Her lips met his pelvis, and Eddie swooned into the wall.

She held him there and sort of chugged, made herself cough. She did it again and again, pumped her mouth around him an inch, just enough to make room to bear down, again and again as she pinched his thighs over his jeans between her thumbs and the curls of the sides of her index fingers, like she needed two tiny fleshholds or else the floor would swallow her. Her throat became coated wet and warm and thick with a new viscous saliva she had summoned by sheer fury, and her tongue and her lips and the beam down the roof of her mouth enwombed his dick now such that it was like he was fucking cream.

His hands found a dip or slat between the boards behind him and he inched his fingertips inside like to prise them apart. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. The sounds from her throat ruthless and syrupy. Had she wanted to do this—God—looking down on him from above in her shorts rolled so short they were basically panties, or had she rooted herself to her mother’s chair fantasizing about anything in her mouth that wasn’t yes ma’am, or had she wanted holy shit, ohh Christ this was the best blow job of his life.

“Fuck, Chrissy,” he muttered.

She went like HNNGH. in harsh criticism and punched the meat of his thighs with her hands balled up. For a half second Eddie had to kind of check out as actually coming in this girl’s mouth was probably not something he was allowed to do. Then his eyes traced with not unpleasant franticness the now-rapidly familiar planes of the top half of her face—eyelashes, pissy forehead, scar—and found her ponytail. It was lollipop-red in the shade and as glossy as if it had been licked. He put exactly as much thought into it as required to ask himself how would she like it getting hauled all over sundry then wrapped his hand around the brown elastic and tugged. Her eyelids parted enough for him to see white: rolled back.

And so he pulled. She sucked him off and with each swallow bringing his brain to the precipice of expiry and sweet destruction he yanked the roots of her hair. Soon they were moaning almost in tandem, half-seconds off, two octaves separate and hers climbing. Her fingers crooked through his belt loops. His fingertips ground into her scalp. Together he thought perhaps they both were withdrawn and exposed. The way she had him now was like she’d sliced his belly for the coyotes and black vultures, her hands in his guts in the middle of a yellow field, scrying for omens and auguries. Her voice hiccupped and cooed wet. The way she had him. Spite so nice he might cut off his hand to have her shout at him again. Guts and limbs, he had plenty to spare. Jesus fucking Christ he said in a breath, not even a whisper, not even a thought. Jesus fucking Christ. This was the strongest he’d felt the pull of death since Caliburn had heeded God’s hand instead of his own and brought them screaming out of the valley into open electric air. 

Closing his eyes seemed disrespectful. But the last bit of her he saw before his eyes slid shut anyway was the tendon at the side of her neck, jutting snug and delicate as her throat took his cock. His last dying chivalric thought—the rusty sword still swaying from its master’s thrust—was that perhaps he should open his mouth and politely inform her he was close and therefore alternative choreography was best considered when the fingers of her left hand crept up and those rounded nails scratched two inches of his bare pelvic bones and then it all kind of happened at once. He canted forward and only just caught himself on the beam to his right and so didn’t crush her like a collapsing tower of muscle and cum. He came in her mouth with the purest shimmering electric light splintering behind his eyes. 

When he surfaced his eyelashes were wet. Unseamed he looked down and saw the last of her swallowing throat.

Chrissy thunked onto her boot heels and wiped her lips with the back of her hand then looked up. Her pristine jeans were smudged across the knees with dirt. Radiating from her sweaty bangs and her wet chin and the gleaming line of her front teeth as she panted was the pulsing anger now tempered with the first real question she had ever asked him: And so who are you to me now? Do you say thank you? How dare you? Wow ma’am? Good girl?

As Eddie stood there also panting with his hands hovered again like at a stickup he became aware down to the atomic level of the sweat all over his face and clinging under his arms and that neither of them had put his dick back in his jeans. He could still feel her ponytail in his palm.

Answer her. Answer her. 

“Maybe this is the nature of your problem,” he said.

—what? WHAT? WAS THAT?

She stared. Breathing. His dick hovering there like the proffered fucking Eucharist. Go on. Okay, go on!

“You strut around that house thinking a stable girl’s the lowest you could fall,” he said. “As if my fucking you in this stall with my boots on would be your greatest degradation.” She was watching from below with her eyes bright, mouth slack. If he squatted down and forced his hand inside her jeans he would find her soaking wet. The mountainside above him was a hundred feet high and covered in bluegrass. “Mrs. Carver I think you’ve just discovered the brainless peace and posture of a fuckin dairy maid.”

He hitched his dick back into his jeans and looked over her head, carelessly, into the afternoon sunlight and stepped around her. He had to kind of yank his belt to shuck his jeans up his hips but then he didn’t even tuck his shirt back in, just strolled into fresh air. His hat he got off the fencepost and plopped it on, tilted rakishly low on his forehead, and found his truck by dirt memory entirely via his rattlesnake boots. He drove down the road enough to clear the stables and not be seen by what Wayne called the big house, whereupon he pulled over into a shallow ditch, put the belly of his hat over his face, and screamed, “FUCK!”

He was genuinely fired. This was it. He’d never been fired before. Town gossip was what it was but he’d never been fired. Temporarily run off a camp? Yes. Faced down the barrels of two drunk shotguns over a vehicular misunderstanding? Who hadn’t. Forbidden on pain of loss of life from speaking for the entirety of June and July? He’d written five chapters! But he had never fucked to death his biggest paycheck not twelve hours after she’d signed it. 

Oh my God—the truck. Oh my GOD. His fucking plane ticket! HIS. FUCKING. CASTLES. 

Eddie was now effectively crying into the satin liner of his father’s black fur felt Stetson.

Wait. Wait. 

No. That septic blonde cunt had said it herself. He was a miracle worker. 

Wait a second. They couldn’t fire him. They wouldn’t! They wouldn’t fire the miracle worker! Yeah! He was the rope untangler! You couldn’t fire that guy. You couldn’t fire Jesus Christ!

With the hat still over his face Eddie turned ninety degrees and lolled backwards over the console and stared without seeing at the sky. His arms muscles were thrumming like he’d hauled himself up a ledge and his dick was still half-hard. He was supposed to start with her tomorrow. He was supposed to have started today. Did he have to go back this evening? Would she threaten him with a knife? Would he have to eat her out? Was that in the contract?

“They can’t,” he mumbled to no one. They couldn’t. They needed him. It was the only card he ever had.

Castles. Whalesong. Antares. This horse had better be fucked.

Notes:

Alley Sour: When a horse-due to nerves, pain, confusion, or fear-refuses to enter the arena.