In Hot Water Pt. 04

"Let's go to bed." I pull my sister her by the hand to our room. Neither of us drank much the latter half of the day.

I lock the door, and throw my clothes onto the dark floor, then climb into bed, listening to the sky pour marbles on the roof.

A very unclothed Jessica touches me.

"Do you have your phone charger?" asks my sister. "I think mine's in the living room, and I'm done wearing clothes today."

I lean over the edge of the bed and pull the charger by the cord out of my bag. I need to charge mine too, after all the bank nonsense. The signal is weak over here at the beach, and it seems to drain the battery faster than usual. I hand it to Jessica to use first.

"Thanks." Her phone lights the room briefly, before returning us to darkness. "Can I jetpack on you a bit?"

"Jetpack?"

"Yes. Turn on your side, so I can hang on you from behind."

I lay on my good shoulder. "Like this?"

"Yes." My sister's breath warms my neck.

"You see," she whispers, "this way I can say evil things to you."

"What if I want to say evil things to you?"

"We can switch in a bit, if you want." She kisses my neck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 21

White tile and chlorine, then black and gold marble, and we're back in an elevator.

We carried our clothes, and wore towels from the rack by the pool, but it's all on the floor by my sister's knees. The humming lift whispers to us, and when the doors open I'm disappointed we're greeted only by white marble squares, and not people. She pulls her mouth off me, giving a parting lick, and I straighten the wet blue plaid enough to make a run for the room.

She pushes the card in, and runs into the darkness. I follow and lean my back on the door. Then I sing the orange song, so we can see. She grabs my hand, and I'm on top of a linen pedestal again.

"I wasn't done," she says.

My sister pins my shoulders to a pillow, but I'm not sure which bed it's from. Or which one I'm on. The covers of both are on the floor, all mixed together. Then she's riding me, and she takes her hair down. It's still dry, and I'm enveloped in a shaded curtain when she leans to kiss me.

I cum inside her. I've lost count how many times tonight. Probably one for each glass of wine I've drank, and we've gone through a couple bottles already. She rides me for a while longer, then slows.

My sister leans over, and her tongue makes itself at home in my mouth, pushing hard at first, then softening. When she pulls away, it's just her lips. She leans back and rolls off the bed, tickling black silk the last thing to leave me.

A cork pops, and wine appears in front of me.

"Shower time," she says. "Come with me?"

Steam fills a silver and white cavern. Multiple fans adorn the ceiling, but we turn them all off. A showerhead sprouts from each end of the chamber, and a third one with a thousand different knobs detaches from the wall.

We stand lip to lip under a single scalding fountain.

Then it's wet hair and towels and we're dripping. I sip the latest glass from the bathroom countertop, while my sister stands wrapped in a towel, pulling fingers down her hair.

"Can you go again?" she asks.

I set down the glass, and push my sister against white marble, leaning into her, and wrapping my fingers around her neck. Her towel comes undone, pinched against the wall behind her shoulders.

My sister goes limp, and her mouth hangs open. She stands naked and exposed, watching me as I hold her in place.

Then I'm in that moment that you never think you'll be in.

And it's even stranger because of who I'm with.

And she says, "choke me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 22

"Alex."

My sister is yelling at me.

"Alex. Get up."

I claw my eyes open to a strange bedroom dimly lit from the window, and Jessica's shadow darting back and forth.

"Read. Now." My sister thrusts a phone in my face, and holds it there until I take it.

I look at the lock screen.

"This is your mother. They took my phone, so I'm sending this from..."

"Did you read this already?"

"Yes, it went to both of us." Jessica stuffs some clothes in her bag. "Read."

"...the neighbor's phone." The text continues. "The police were just here searching the house. They said they want to talk to you. I told them you wouldn't be back until later. I don't know what they were after. I'll text you again later from Phil's phone."

My sister zips up a black fleece sweater over the top of her yellow sundress. She clicks her suitcase shut, and looks across the bed at me. "We need to go. Now."

"I guess we do." I start scooping all my discarded clothing into my own bag, pausing to find some pants to wear.

Jessica flees the room, pulling the door shut behind herself. After securing my luggage, I follow my sister to find her in the living room attached to Jane's ear. Kevin stands in the doorway to their bedroom, rubbing his eyes, and wearing the same sweatpants from the day before. He leans against the doorframe, clearly listening, then walks back into the bedroom, and returns, giving me a subtle nod as he passes me. He knocks on the third bedroom door, and eventually a squinting Matt appears in front of a pitch black room.

"Mornin'," says Kevin.

"Is it?" Matt looks like he's staring into the sun.

"Can Jane and I ride with you guys?"

"I guess."

Kevin holds his hand up in a fist at me, and makes a pumping motion. "Alex."

I hold up my hand to catch whatever is coming my way.

An Audi key spins end over end and I snatch it out of the air.

"Thanks." The black and silver key fob sports multiple buttons, none of them labeled with words. I set my phone on the coffee table, and look at the worn indented pictures.

Kevin watches me. "Red button locks. Big black button unlocks."

"What's going on?" One of Matt's eyes is more open, but the other is still pinched shut.

"Got some shit to take care of," I say.

Jessica detaches herself from Jane, and drags her bag over next to mine. "Thanks, everyone. I'll let you know when we find out more."

Jane nods, then Jessica and I swoop out the door, into the pouring rain. I hit the black button on the key fob, and the Audi chirps, then my sister and I toss our bags into the trunk. I start the car, while my sister says something into the house, then she climbs in next to me.

Kevin's S5 wants to speed.

It's hard to keep under the limit, and I spend more time than I prefer messing with the wipers. Kevin had them on some automatic setting, but the wipers and I disagree on how fast they should be going. I hadn't noticed anything remarkable about the ride while I'd been a passenger, but it takes to the curves of the coast highway with ease, even with the wash of the road.

"It has to be related," says Jessica. "Red Haired Lady's text. The money. This now."

"So, Dad got caught." I pull us onto Highway 26, heading east toward Portland.

"Maybe." Jessica grips her phone in her hand, and my stomach sinks.

"Oh fuck, I left my phone on the table."

"I'll have Jane grab it." Ticking sounds fill the car to the dance of my sister's fingers. "I'm going to text her back too."

"Jane?"

"No. Red Haired Lady."

"What are you going to say?"

"Same thing I was going to tell her in person. Sort of."

"Can you tell me what you say?"

"Of course." Jessica's tapping stops. "How about, 'what's this about?'"

"Sure."

More tapping, then the swish of wet pavement under the punishing grey of the Oregon sky. The windshield gets blurry, and I turn the wipers up.

Jessica's phone buzzes.

"That was fast," I say, terrified of the message. I glance at my sister, and her eyes trace back and forth on her screen.

"She says, 'don't lie to me. I know about the 'charity' you two have with your father.' She put 'charity' in quotes." Jessica's hand flops down onto her lap, fingers still wrapped tightly around her phone. "So that clears that up."

"You going to tell her how we don't know anything about that?"

"Yes," says Jessica, tapping away. "But I'm guessing she won't believe me." After a quick pause, her phone buzzes again. "Now she says, 'tell me what you do know.'"

"Is she just fishing for stuff?" The wipers are scraping the windshield, and I turn them down.

"I don't know. I'm asking."

I squeeze the steering wheel, both hands up top, and have to force myself to relax my grip. I realize I've been pushing on the pedal too hard. The speedometer had gone into triple digits.

"She," starts Jessica. "What?" Ticking from my right side.

"Okay, she clearly knows all about the checks and the money stuff. But she's trying to get me to talk about it. She isn't really saying anything though."

"What about it? We just cash the checks and then pay for school with it."

"That's what I told her. She of course doesn't believe me. Oh, that one was from Mom. She's with Phil at his place. I've got his number now."

"Did you tell Mom we're on our way back?"

"Yes."

"She say anything else? Like, what the police were after?"

"She doesn't know. She said they took a few things, mostly electronics."

"I bet they're now in possession of a bunch of shitty anthropology papers." I go to push Kevin's car faster, but end up letting off. "And a game console that's two generations out of date."

"Okay, now Red Haired Lady is asking about shit that happened before I even moved. I don't know anything about this. Some trip Dad took. He was never home anyway."

"Yeah, I have no idea what that's about."

"She says it was with 'the tall slut.' Her words."

"So she knows that part too."

"Guess so. She's just burning everything she can because of it."

I pull the car into the left lane around a slow moving truck. The wash from the truck sprays over the top of us, and I put the wipers as fast as they go. Even with that I can barely see. My shoulder gives a dull ache when I turn the wheel to move us back into the right lane.

"Is she texting you from her phone?" I ask.

"Yes. Why?"

"Just figured if the cops are searching our house, they'd have searched hers too."

"They haven't taken my phone yet," says Jessica, "Or yours. Maybe they haven't gotten to her."

The grey sky parts in front of us, as we approach the west side of the Portland metro area. The rain lets up, and traffic is surprisingly light. I turn down the wipers, and try to picture what the authorities could have done to our house. It's clearly enough that Mom doesn't want to wait around there, though she might just be after Phil's companionship. Jessica and I still haven't met the guy.

I blindly offer my hand, and my sister presses it between her palms, and holds it on top of her leg. The drive goes quiet for a few minutes, and I try to keep the car at a reasonable speed. Jessica's phone buzzes, and she lets go of me, and wields the phone vertical in one hand. A single finger hovers over the screen. I rub her thigh, below the hem of her yellow dress.

"Um," says my sister. "Okay."

"What now?"

"Quote, 'they picked up the slut.'"

"Oh."

"Mm-Hmm." Jessica's finger paints frenzied lines on the screen of her phone.

"What about Dad?"

"I just asked and her response was a question, 'is your brother paying for things for you?' What's that supposed to mean?"

A flash in the rearview mirror catches my eye.

The pulsing blue lights of a police patrol car strobe behind us.

"Oh, fuck." I take my hand off my sister's leg, and grip the steering wheel.

Jessica looks up from her phone. "How fast were you going?"

I guide the car over to the right, and the roadside corrugation shoots through my shoulder, waring us that we've left our lane, before we finally come to a stop. Blue and white lights flash at us from all of Kevin's mirrors, as Jessica puts her phone away and sits with her hands in her lap. I decide to keep mine on top of the steering wheel. After an alarmingly long time, doors open on both sides of the dark blue sedan behind us, and I watch in my side mirror, as a tall man in uniform that matches his car approaches. His hat stretches with a wide, round brim, and a crimped crown. The unmistakable look of an Oregon State Trooper. I roll my window down as he nears, and the car floods with of the smell of exhaust and wet pavement.

"License, registration, proof of insurance." The man speaks with a bubbling vocal fry tone that's more airline pilot than officer of the law. He's unnervingly calm.

A red pickup flies by us, and rocks the car. The cop outside my window holds his hat on top of his head, as a gust of wet blows into my face. I watch the pickup fade away down the highway, as I pull Kevin's information out of the glove box by my sister's knees. It's that same red again. The cloth from the Easter basket.

The man's partner lurks outside Jessica's window, and he motions for her to take it down. My sister complies, and the first cop takes the information back to their patrol car, while the second one stays by Jessica's door.

"In a hurry this morning?" asks the trooper by my sister.

"Sorry, I just, uh. It's my buddy's car, and I don't know it that well."

The trooper at the passenger window doesn't respond, and stands next to us, until his partner waves at him from the patrol car behind us.

"Don't move." He traces the road shoulder back, and I can tell they're discussing something about us, but there's no way to know what. One faces away from us, and the other covers his mouth with his hand when he speaks. The hiss of passing cars over wet highway masks everything.

Gummy Bears, Pez, Sour Patch Kids.

Both troopers march in formation back to us and perch on either side of our car again.

"Okay, folks," says the officer at my door. "I--"

"It's our friend's car," says Jessica, interrupting. "He let us borrow it. You can call him."

"We're not worried about that, ma'am," says the cop next to my sister.

"Good news and bad news." The man standing by me puts his hand on the doorframe. "I'm not going to cite you for speeding." He looks at my license, then at me. "Alex?"

"Yeah."

"But, my boss needs to talk to you. So you get to come with us."

"What?" Jessica bolts upright in her seat.

Junior Mints, Nerds, York Peppermint Patties.

"What's your relation here, ma'am?" asks the cop by my sister.

I try not to make a face, but I'm sure I do. This isn't how I want to spend my day.

"I'm... the girlfriend."

Getting to know my committed sister.

"Okay," says the cop next to me. "We need to take your boyfriend with us. Are you able to drive this vehicle? Otherwise we'll have to call for it to be towed."

"Yes, I can drive it." Jessica pauses. "Can I come pick him up when you're done?"

"I really don't know how long it will be," says the trooper by my door. "But, yes, he'll probably want a ride later."

Jessica leans over and kisses me. No tongue, but she's puckering and biting my lower lip with a vulgar showiness I've never experienced before. It's like she's waiting to be pulled off my face.

"Please step out of the car, sir."