“I had a meeting with Burke today and, well, things on the job are a little unsettled. I think I’m just going to work though lunch.”
As much as I love Leslie, as dear as she is as a friend, she wasn’t the person I wanted to see right now. My last conversation with her, while it had helped me put things in some kind of perspective, made me feel guilty, as if I’d betrayed both Jake and Chase’s confidences. After the weekend I’d just been through, I really didn’t feel up to the mental challenge of editing my words to avoid a repeat guilt-fest later.
“Oh. Well, yeah. I heard about that.” She took a sip of coffee, not meeting my eyes.
“What? You heard about what?” I pushed my keyboard away, looking at her closely. Leslie, unlike me, can play poker. I’ve seen her. She can hide her emotions if she wants. And now, she was hiding something. But she was also itching to tell me. I could see the conflict flicking in her eyes.
“Oh, you know. Burke was up in HR earlier, looking through your personnel file.” Her eyes flickered up to meet mine. They were blank and unreadable, the confidentiality aspect of her job apparently kicking in, the desire to gossip momentarily quelled.
“Okay. So you know something I don’t know and you can’t tell me, because it’s confidential.” That familiar sensation of anger, which seemed to always be there recently, that tight knot in my chest, rose up again. My nerves were frayed, my mind exhausted and my patience at its end. I snapped.
“You know, Leslie, that’s fine. Don’t tell me. I won’t pry it out of you. But for all this time that I’ve been seeing Jake, when I told you there were things I couldn’t discuss, you managed to make me feel guilty for not telling you, because you were my friend. And because I felt guilty, I told you things I really wish now I hadn’t said.” I stopped for a breath. My voice had risen, taking on that tone I hate, the tone I get when I’m on a roll, apparently enraptured with the sound of my own righteous voice.
“Abby, it’s not the same...” Leslie looked back at me with wide eyes.
“How is it not the same? Confidentiality is confidentiality, whether it’s you in HR or me with a request from Jake. It’s exactly the same. But you have some deep need to get all the juicy details out of me, now that I actually have some. And I’m finally fed up with it.”
I watched as Leslie stood, silently gathering her lunch, her coffee, moving to the door. She stopped, speaking to me without turning around.
“I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, Abby. I’m hoping that outburst was a result of that and not something else. Let’s just pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”
She was gone before I could say anything, the only thing left behind the smell of her coffee. I massaged my temples, willing myself to push the encounter out of my mind, for now. I had enough things to drive me crazy and this, at this moment, wasn’t something I could dwell on. I was being a lousy friend, but I had to trust that my friendship with Leslie could withstand the other issues complicating my life.
Late that afternoon, as I was diligently working through my emails, the phone rang. I prickled at the interruption, contemplated letting it go to voice mail but decided to answer it, thinking it might be Leslie. In hindsight, I’m not sure it was such a good idea.
It was Stacy.
“Abby, I know I told Chase I wasn’t going to get in the middle of his personal business, and I’m not. But I am getting into the middle of yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve talked to Jane.” There was a moment of silence.
My heart was thumping uncomfortably in my chest. I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear what Stacy had to say, but powerless to stop her.
“Abby, I think we should talk. Come to the club.”
“Chase is never here on Thursdays.” Stacy met me at the street door, sensing my hesitation.
She led me into Chase’s office, pointing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. I sat down, remembering the first time I’d come here, to Chase’s club. I’d sat in this same chair, immediately drawn to him, knowing then on some level I was playing with fire, just not realizing how all-consuming that fire would be.
“When did you talk to Jane?”
Stacy was sitting in Chase’s chair, looking even more petite behind his big desk.
“She came to the club on Sunday night. We talked a little bit, nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. I was busy...Chase had taken the weekend off last minute, said he was exhausted. So I was riding herd on the masses.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand.
“No big deal, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time to talk with her. But then, out of the blue, she called me at home this morning. Said she had something to tell me...almost like she couldn’t wait to spit it out.”
Stacy hesitated a beat, holding my gaze. “She told me she was seeing Jake again.”
I’m pretty sure the shock was evident on my face; it usually is.
“You’re kidding? Or she’s lying? Please tell me it’s a joke or something...anything.”
I thought back to the last time I saw Jake, leaving him on Saturday morning...after spending the night. I thought we’d come so far, he’d finally been honest with me, completely honest when he said he hadn’t wanted to find Jane, wasn’t interested in seeing her again. How had that changed?
“Did she say when he saw her?” My voice was shaky, my palms suddenly clammy.
“Saturday night. At that dive where she works. She said he was waiting for her when she got there to start her shift. Stayed there until she got off work.”
A frown creased Stacy’s forehead. “Abby, that’s not all. She said he slept with her...that night. And a couple times since.”
A couple of times? My face felt numb, my lips struggling to form words. “It’s only Thursday.”
Stacy nodded. “Yeah, I know. I did the math. As near as I could tell, from what she’s said, he’s been seeing her almost every day since Saturday night.”
She leaned forward. “But you have to know that this is Jane; sometimes what she says and reality aren’t quite the same.”
“Do you think she’s lying?” Maybe there was a glimmer of hope.
Stacy shook her head. “No, not this time, not about seeing Jake, I mean. But she may be exaggerating a bit, blowing it up to more than it is, or have her days mixed up. I think she’s still using, which is why Chase keeps an eye on her, or has me do that, when she’s here. It’s why I knew about Jake in the first place, when she was his sub. And why I do tell Chase about her, what she said about Jake. He calls her a loose cannon and he’s not far off the mark.”
I shook my head. None of this made sense. Then something else, something very ugly reared its head.
“Stacy, did she say he was sleeping with her or she’d gone back to being his submissive?”
Stacy grew serious. “Oh. Abby, she said she was sleeping with him. As in, just sex, not as a sub.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my head. I must have looked devastated. Stacy came around the corner of the desk, wrapping an arm around my shoulder.
“Oh, Abby. Honey, I’m sorry.” She hugged me, her tough as nails exterior slipping away briefly.
“If any man did that to me, he’d be out of my life for good.”
I called Jane’s number when I got home from work on Friday, not really knowing what I wanted to say, other than I wanted to see her again. Why I wanted to torture myself, I didn’t know. Maybe I wanted her to tell me Stacy was full of shit. But I didn’t think that was the case.
She didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. “I knew you’d call, knew you’d want to check up on Jake. You’re that kind of girl. Yeah, if you want, you can come talk to me.” She gave me an address in a dismal part of town. When I found the building, it was just as dismal as its neighbors.
I climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor. It smelled of stale grease and the seemingly ever-present miasma of cigarette smoke. I couldn’t imagine Jake here, but then again, the Jake I thought I knew and the Jake I was uncovering seemed to be two vastly different people.
Jane answered my knock, wearing only a short robe belted around her waist. The scarlet color set off her pale skin and raven black hair. Despite myself I instantly compared myself to her: slender legs, tiny waist, waves of black hair...high cheekbones. Of course he likes her; she’s got the perfect body.
She pointed me toward the kitchen table, pushing aside a stack of magazines and newspapers from one end, begrudgingly clearing a space for me on the sticky Formica.
“You want coffee? I have some made, but no creamer. Only some of that artificial sweetener crap.”
I shook my head. “No, nothing. Thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Jane sank into the chair opposite me, fishing a cigarette out of a crumpled pack. She lit a match, the smell of sulphur filling my nose, followed by the smoke from her cigarette.
Jane squinted at me through the blue haze. “So, you know about Jake. Stacy told you, didn’t she?”
She laughed, a rough bark of sound. “I knew she would.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette into an overflowing ashtray.
“I don’t go in for deep analysis of why I do things. Too much shit in there to dig through. But in this case, as the shrinks would say, my motive was transparent.”
She waved the cigarette at me, holding it between her slender fingers. “I wanted to know if you two still have some kind of relationship...have some kind of connection. Figured if I told Stacy and you called, you were still involved. And by the looks of it, I was right.”
Her eyes narrowed as she regarded me through the smoke. “I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn’t been in the picture, he never would have bothered to come looking for me. Lucky me.”
There was a long pause while she took another drag from her cigarette, the end glowing bright red. She blew out a trail of smoke, leaning forward, watching my face.
“You’re real quiet today, aren’t you? No questions for Jane, no pitying looks for the poor damaged girl Jake screwed over. Because now I’m not the girl he screwed over...I’m the girl he’s screwing.
“And I bet he’s not screwing you right now, is he?” She sat back, crushing out her cigarette.
“I didn’t come here...”
“Yeah, you didn’t come here to talk about Abby or Jane. You’re here to talk about Jake. I get it.”
She shook out another cigarette, holding it unlit between her fingers as she went on.
“So let’s talk about Jake. What do you want to know this time about Mr. Meyers?”
The match flared again, smoke rising to join the cloud hovering just below the ceiling. It was hard to breath; I felt like I was suffocating, from the smoke and from the crushing weight in my chest.
“When? When did he come find you?” My voice was steadier than I felt.
“Last Saturday. Found me at the bar. Either you gave him the name or he remembered I worked there. Either way, he was waiting when I started my shift. Can’t say I was real surprised he was there. It’s like that movie...what’s it called? Something Separate Degrees...Six Degrees of Separation, that’s it.” She exhaled another cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.