Wicked Ch. 06

"You know, Ilan, on my graduation year it won me first prize in the Traditional France Cuisine Competition."

"Where exactly did you study?"

"Nique Ta Mere in Paris." [French for 'fuck your mom']

"Never heard of it."

"It's every year in the top five chef schools in Va Te Faire Foutre magazine." [Go Fuck Yourself magazine].

"Good for you. Make the call for me, Ana." He kissed Ana's cheek and took off.

Sean stared at Ilan's back, started to say something, but then reconsidered. He sat down, lifted his legs onto the decorated table, then lit himself a cigarette.

"Don't let him get under your skin. He can be a bit tiresome sometimes," Ana said.

Sean turned to her and smiled. It was the kind of smile that sends young hearts under shapely bosoms, fluttering. Ana couldn't help but smile back.

"'Fuck Your Mother Chef's School' in Paris? Really?"

"Sure," he said, "it's on C'est Des Conneries Boulevards."

"I could have told on you," she said.

"But you didn't."

"You don't know Ilan, he would have blown the whole deal and I really don't have the energy to search for another catering service with him."

Sean took a nice hit, then puffed slowly and drew the little cloud back in.

"So where did you learn to cook so well?"

"In prison."

"Seriously?"

"Nah, I just use that line as an ice breaker."

Ana laughed and sat down beside him. She pretended to immerse herself in the catering's menus and brochures but she actually kept checking him out. Nothing wrong with just looking. "Is that a joint, Sean?"

"Sure hope so, otherwise I paid way too much."

"My mom used to warn me away from boys like you."

"My mom used to warn me from having sex with our cat. Boy she was right, if there's one thing I learned about sex with cats, is that you just don't do it."

"Too bad she didn't warn you about doing drugs."

"It's medicinal pot."

"And I never faked an orgasm."

"For my 'dealing with douche-bags' condition." He inhaled deep and closed his eyes, like a lazy cat taking a sunbath. "I used to beat up kids like your brother in school."

"How sweet the revenge, that the bully now wears an apron and has to suck up to the brainy kid, who now wears a suit."

"Philosophum non facit barba," Sean said [Latin: 'A beard doesn't make a philosopher']

"What?"

"It's Latin."

"But what does it mean?"

"It means that you and your brother aren't brainy, just born to the right parents. 'Heavy purse'. Jesus, what a douche."

"You speak Latin?"

"I speak Latin, curse in Arabic, rhyme in Italian, count in Spanish, reason in German, and court in French. But I only dream in soggy Belfast dialect. It's weird, but I never dream in other languages. He opened his eyes and caught her again staring at him with a hungry look. "What?"

"What?"

"You've been eyeballing me since the moment you came in here. Did we...?" He pointed at her and back at himself. "You and I...? No, we didn't. I would have remembered someone as hot as you."

"It's ... it's your eyes. They're ... so purple."

"My dad gave them to me, the only good thing the fucker gave away."

"I've seen someone with eyes just like yours, in Jerusalem, at Hadassah Hospital."

"His name wouldn't be Dom by a freak chance?"

Ana felt the blood rushing to her face. "You know him?"

"Nope, always been a big fucking mystery to me. He's my big brother."

"Oh." She could easily see the resemblance, now that she knew what to look for. Sean was the slimmer, rascal version of Dom. While Dom could send the most wild, free-spirited woman into heavy daydreaming about settling down and raising kids, Sean was the kind who could make Mother Theresa wish she could do bad things with him. So goddamn good-looking, it's so not fair. "I really should be heading back to work." She lifted her legs on the table near his.

"Me, too." He offered her the cigarette. "Wanna share?"

She nodded and he pressed the cig end to her lips. Ana inhaled deep and immediately started coughing, and her eyes begun to water. "I haven't smoked pot before, actually."

"No shit. How did you meet Dom?"

"He was my sister's doctor."

"He's a good doctor," Sean said.

"Yeah."

"He's like the best fucking doctor in the whole world; he's the best at everything he does."

"You idolize him too much."

"I hate him," Sean said. He pulled out a duffle bag from under the table, and to her surprise took out a concert flute and started playing a quick tune. She watched his long fingers skipping across the instrument, and envisioned them playing her body. It was a bit too much, and she closed her eyes. The music washed over her and surrounded her. She had a sudden urge to stay like this, under the noon sun, for a few more hours, or a week, or forever. It was one of those perfect moments in time, and it surrounded her like a bubble. All of her uncertainties and fears, including Dan and her marriage crisis, banged against its surface without a chance of getting inside.

"So beautiful," she said when he had finished. She hadn't meant just the piece. "Was it Mozart?" She tried the joint again and decided marijuana wasn't her thing. "My brother really is a douche, you know." She said, once she was done coughing.

"And then add some."

Ana freed her foot from the sandal with her other leg. She then glided her big toe along Sean's calf. Despite her casual demeanor her heart was running at the speed of lust. "You're nothing like your brother. He's, you know, a prude, big time."

"Watch it."

"Why, you can call my brother a douche and I can't call yours a prude?"

"Dom once took the blame for something I did, and went for a year-and-a-half in juvie because of it."

"Sounds like something Mr. Righteousness would do."

"And when I was in prison he paid big-time so I won't get messed with, and he ain't got a 'heavy purse' or even a light one, and he bought this business for me and practically every time I fucked up he was there to pick up the pieces even though -- God as my witness -- he should have given up, years ago."

"He's a saint."

"So, see that green garbage container? That's where you'll find yourself if you trash him one more goddamn time, and I don't give a fuck if your daddy's purse is the size of Canada, or if your leg feels nice."

She saw something in his eyes that reminded her of Dom's cold ice, and it almost sent her running. "All right, Mr. Touchy. I thought you said you hated him."

"I'd take a bullet for him."

"Make up your mind, which one is it?"

"Both." He nodded. "Both ... I think. Does it make any sense?"

"Actually, yes."

He sighed deeply. "So, we have so far: a 'complicated siblings' relationship, one rich father, one asshole father, a wedding, seven hundred guests, foie gras not too liquid-y, an ex-con, and Bach 'The Badinerie'. It wasn't Mozart."

"And me," Ana said.

"And you. What does it all add up to, beats me."

"A boner?"

Sean checked. "Yep."

@@@@@@@@@

Ana tried to breathe in deeply; her house was crumbling around her.

Liana was sobbing on the carpet, face down. When it had started, her crying sounded like a sad kitten that lost it's mom, but it was picking up momentum fast.

"So I regretfully have to inform you that we pulled Tom out of the Algebra-Excellency-Program. He may apply for re-entrance in January, based upon his achievements. Yours sincerely...." She stared at the note, then at Tom, then back at Liana.

Dan knelt on the floor beside their little daughter, speaking softly.

"Dan, please...." Ana signaled him to stop. He either caught it and didn't interpret, or was ignoring her.

Liana's crying picked up; she added floor-kicking to the show.

"I'm not angry with you because you failed the test, Tom. It's because this note was in your schoolbag for two weeks. I got a call from Mrs. Shultz. She asked me why I didn't sign it yet. Do you know how embarrassed I was when she realized I had no clue to what she was talking about?"

Tom's chin rested on his chest; he was searching for a secret trapdoor in the kitchen's floor through which he could disappear.

"I'm very disappointed. Very! What else are you hiding from me? Dan, please...."

Liana's shrieks hit a decibel that could cause a sane person to stick a pencil in his eye.

"Sweetie, come on," Dan said, "we can go look at the dress, if you like. Would you like to see it? You can't wear the dress now." He placed a calming hand on Liana's writhing body, but it only served to empower her tantrum. "We want it white and clean for the wedding tomorrow."

"Dan, stop!" Ana said "This is not crying; this is manipulation."

"But she's never done anything like this before."

"Unless you want it to be the first of many, you've got to let me handle it."

"How?"

"Tanya Baron's school."

"I don't.... I really don't like it," he said. But he picked Liana's body off the floor in a fatherly bear hug and took her upstairs for a timeout.

Alice slouched in the corner of the kitchen table, scratching her left arm, distant and withdrawn. The cast was off and she had been trying to do the physiotherapy drills instructed by the doctor, but soon lost interest. At this point in the day, she and Dan usually couched down for TV together, or some stupid movie she had downloaded. They had found that they shared a deep love of Monty Python. So Alice had downloaded every episode of Flying Circus she could get her bit-torrents on. They would Python it, sometimes into the late hours, roaring with laughter like two drunken friends in a pub.

Or just like a fucking husband and wife.

But something had changed in the last couple of days. Alice, in a very un-Alice like way, had withdrawn into her own shell. Dan too, seemed to have taken a step back. Nothing was said out loud, but the body language between them spoke volumes.

Just like a fucking husband and wife.

The moods roller coaster in the house, took its toll on everyone. Tom's meteoric decline with regard to behavior and homework, was a shock. Liana's sudden explosion tonight had caught everyone by total surprise.

In retrospect, Ana should have seen it coming. No, Alice has got to go and I've got to have my house back. Alice had overstayed her welcome. In the clinic they promised the leg cast should go off too in a few weeks., Ana would allow her a few days to rearrange her life. But that's it. She's moving out. Things are going to change, starting today. No, not today, right now. She gave her sister one last critical stare, sent Tom to his bed, and with a determined step strode into her bathroom in which she spent over an hour.

@@@@@@@@@

Dan slept. There had been no dreams for some time now; the upside of a total conk-out. No Nadav Fine, smiling his inferno smile above a moaning Ana. No dreams about Alice burning him with confusion and shame; not even the dream about the night Tom had died in the ambush. Dark, forgetful, bliss. It felt like sacrilege to be intruded upon, and yet it was happening; he was being pulled out of the depths.

"Dan, wake up."

"Huh?"

"Dan."

His teacher had once told his dad, 'Dan has only three speeds: slow, slower, and pause'. In the army he had always asked Tom to wake him at least twenty minutes before his watch.

"Dan."

His hand went automatically under the bed in search of the MAG. Did Tom take it back to the armory after shooting range practice, yesterday? "Give me a sec, man, I'm getting there."

"Dan, where do you think you are?"

He opened one eye. Someone had switched the light on. It burned his retina, so he closed it again. He wasn't in the army; he was thirty-eight, and this wasn't Sanur camp. Tom was still nineteen and would stay nineteen forever. Dan had named his first-born boy, Tom, even though Ana's father had demanded his first grandson be named after his own dad. It was one of the few times Dan had stood up to Ana.

"Dan."

"What time is it? What happened?" He sat up in bed and blinked like an owl, "The kids --"

"Are asleep. Nothing happened," Ana said. "No, actually a lot happened. Too much." She shook her head.

Dan stared at her stupidly.

"We can't go on like this," she said, "things got to change."

"I...." he croaked, then coughed, "I've done a lot of thinking, too. I have a ... I have a small apartment."

"What?" Her voice went a tone higher than usual.

"There are apartments for the youth shelter's staff, some are even in decent shape. As the headmaster and manager, I'm entitled to one."

"So?"

"So we'll do things slowly, the right way, like adults." He yawned even though he tried hard not to. "We'll take professional help with the kids, I want them to suffer as little as possible."

Ana felt her heart plunging; she hadn't seen it coming, not by a long shot. "Divorce? You sat down with yourself and all you could come up with is throwing all we have down the toilets?"

"Are you wearing a baby-doll, Ana?"

"This is your fucking solution. Every time I hope things will be different you disappoint me again. Did you really give it more than your usual five minutes?"

He was fully awake now and started noticing things. His wife was wearing a new, black satin baby-doll, that looked like an evening dress. "I think it's the best solution."

"You think!"

He nodded.

Fear rose from within the pit of her stomach, up to the roots of her hair. This was going totally downhill. She was certain that she had read the signs right during the past week, that Dan was ripe for reconciliation. She'd figured some crying together, they'll say they're sorry, have some of the good old boring sex, and spoon for the night. Then everything would return to what it had been. Her calculations were right; only, the equation parameters had changed. Dan had changed. Aggressiveness used to send him to a corner with a white flag; now it was met with an annoying, passive resolve.

"But things were getting better, are getting better," she softened her tone.

"They sure are. We say 'hi' every morning. We even cooperate when it comes to important issues. With Alice keeping us away from each other's throats we could even run this family like a successful business; but this is not a relationship."

"We're not getting a divorce, Dan."

"You're afraid. Me too; but I think ... I know it's for the best."

"How can you be so calm about this?"

"I'm not, Ana, we haven't slept in the same room for two months, this is --"

"I didn't ask you to go sleep upstairs."

"You never told me to come down, either."

"But I want you to, I wanted for so long. I miss you so much, I miss what we had." She touched his cheek with the tip of her finger. "Come down with me, please. We can make everything right again, I know you miss me just as bad."

"Ana, I ..."

She leaned over and kissed his cheek; then her lips went up to his forehead. Feather-light, like an artist applying his final touches to a painting. She took his hand and kissed it too, then placed it on her breast. 

"Ana, I ..." He gently pulled back. It took every ounce of will he had, and some that he didn't. "There is nothing more I want in this world, but I can't turn the clock around. What you did ... no that's not fair, what we both did to each other."

She felt her rage flaring. "So this is it; instead of fighting you'll just fold again, run away as usual."

"I'm not going to fight you, Ana, I'll let you and the kids have everything you need."

"Of course you won't fight me, you never do; me, or anyone. Pretty fucking amazing for a guy who won the heavyweight championship, but you never pick a fight that isn't a walk in the park. You're a wuss."

"Stop it."

"You are, I've seen you so many years, in work, everywhere, jokers with half your brain and talent pass you by, no, leave you behind them in a cloud of dust. People who contribute nothing to the company get a raise while you work seven days a week and get the boot. You're pathetic."

"That's not fair."

She rose up. "Oh, that's not fair? How do you think I feel about it? To be married to someone who doesn't care enough to fight for her? That sure makes me feel desirable." She wiped her eyes with her arm. "You're always so damn passive about everything. Instead of manning it up once in your life, you choose to run away from your problems like a real fucking coward."

"Okay, I heard enough --"

The slap resounded around the little room like an insult.

Dan massaged his cheek slowly. "That felt good, Ana?"

Slap. This time on the right.

"Stop it!" Her hand came down again, but he deflected it. She tried to land another one with her left, but he intercepted that one, too.

"You're a wuss, Dan, a real pussy."

He rose. "Stop it, you'll wake the kids, you know how long it took me to put Liana to sleep?"

"You're an idiot." She tried to slap him again, but again he deflected her. She kicked his crotch and he lost his concentration long enough for her to land another slap. This time she used her nails and it left three bloody trails on his cheek.

"Stop!"

"You're so damn passive, so thick, there's simply no way of getting through. An idiot."

"I'm not an idiot."

"The biggest ever...."

She tried to slap him again but he grabbed her hand. She tried with her left but he grabbed that one, too. He pushed her until her back and hands pressed against the cold wall. "I'm fucking tired of you, and Alice, and anyone else calling me an idiot all the time."

"But you are."

"Sure I am. You were so smart, you didn't have the grades to get into Jerusalem Law faculty. Daddy had to butter them up with a nice donation so they would accept you. And Alice, she went to some idiotic arts school, but I'm the idiot. I won an excel scholarship in mathematics. I fought like hell to get that degree and no one ever gave me a dime. My psychometric grade is 730, what was yours, honey?"

"An idiot."

His face was millimeters from hers, "I hate you."

"That's the spirit." Ana closed the tiny gap between them and closed her mouth on his. It wasn't a kiss, it was a lioness leaping on her pray.

Dan felt his lower lip go numb from the pain.

Ana licked the blood off her own lips and smiled her triumph.

"Jesus."

She lunged again.

This time, he answered with passion, and attacked right back. Their lips and tongues met. Nothing was tender about it. Like two snakes trying to strangle each other, they fought for domination. First, Ana's tongue pushed into his mouth, and then he pushed her right back. Their heads separated for a second, Ana gave a vicious laugh and lunged in again. She didn't let go this time and so did Dan. They weren't kissing; they were competing to see who would be the first to run out of air. It was Dan.

"Wuss," she raised her legs and wrapped them around his waist.

"Bitch."

"Do it!" Her voice came out raw and throaty.

Dan let go of her arms, pulled his boxers down, and tried frantically to pull her baby-doll up. There was a sharp ripping sound, followed by Ana's throaty laugh.

"Shut up, you'll wake the kids."

"Idiot."

"Shut up!"

"Do it!"

He lunged between her legs. There was a slight resistance, but she was already wet. His cockhead slipped for a second on her slit, and then she opened up like the castle gate hit by the enemy's ram. Her wet folds wrapped him in a loving grip he had missed so much that he almost came, then and there. It was a powerful lunge, full of anger and revenge and shame, but passion, too. Ana hit the wall behind her hard, and felt her butt being squashed, and still he kept pushing.

Something between a moan and a growl came out of her lips.

Dan pulled back.

"Do it!" He lunged again, harder; it hurt. She laughed. "Do it!" She sunk her nails in his back.

Wham.

"Do it!" She sunk her teeth in his shoulder.