Wolf Among Sheep Read online

  “He thinks he’s here for an interview, Timothy.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Why don’t you sit down, Avery? Tell us about yourself.”

  “I am of no interest, Mrs. Duke.”

  “Well, I think you’re interesting,” she says. “Are you engaged, dear?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that funny?” she asks. She runs her free hand through the front of her long hair and lets the rest of it fall in shining, mocha tresses over the arm of the couch.

  “I’m not …” My brow furrows as I look out through the open windows—a perfect view of the nearby church steeple, the black sea beyond.

  “You don’t like talking about yourself.”

  “I write about other people, ma’am.”

  Even though her light eyes are on me, her fingers play with the hair on the back of her husband’s head. They both recline, so comfortable, unlike the upper class I’ve met in Charleston. I can see why they are exotic, two characters out of Arabian Nights, lounging. I wait for a naked servant to arrive with grapes and palm fronds for fans.

  “Won’t you sit, Avery?” she says.

  I finish my scotch. “I feel I may have misconstrued your invitation, Mrs. Duke. I was under the impression I was here as a journalist.”

  She leans up and puts her feet on the carpet. “Why not be our guest?”

  “I am not often the guest of people like you. Thank you for the scotch. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Timothy.” She pouts, and her husband moves.

  He is a coffee bean sales merchant, Timothy Duke, yet when he stands, he has the bearing of a street thug: tall and broad. If not for the careful haircut and clean teeth, he would have been an imposing figure in a dark alley. I take a step backwards, for some reason expecting to be struck.

  Timothy puts his hands on the sides of my arms and whispers, “Stay. Vonnie, another scotch.” He circles me. I feel his thumbs inside the collar of my suit jacket, and he begins to pull the fabric from my shoulders as his wife drifts to refill my glass. Along with her comes again the foreign floral scent of her perfume.

  Timothy can’t remove my jacket, not fully, as my left hand still holds an empty rocks glass, which Vonnie refills. Then, she leans so close I taste her sweet breath on my tongue.

  “Have you ever enjoyed the attentions of a man, Avery?” she whispers.

  A pair of soft, warm lips presses against the skin behind my ear: Timothy. I shudder and sidestep them both. I finish the scotch in one shot and shrug back into my suit jacket. “I’m sorry, I must … Thank you for the scotch.”

  I don’t look back as I leave. I shut the door tightly and walk down a hall filled with gilded mirrors and watercolor representations of crashing waves. I wait for the elevator and only then realize my hands are curled into fists.

  ***

  “He’ll take some work.” I return to my state of rest on the couch as Timothy fills me a fresh glass of champagne. “Did you see how afraid he was, dear? Of you.”

  My husband sits in the chair opposite. He uses Avery’s discarded scotch glass to subdue his own need for the stuff.

  “Do you think he’s a virgin?”

  “Hardly,” Timothy says.

  “I mean with men. Do you truly think he’s never been with a man?”

  Timothy tilts his head to the side and stares into the fire. I had told him to shave his moustache. I thought it would make Avery more comfortable if Timothy had no facial hair. In a sensory fashion, Timothy and I would feel the same.

  “Americans are so dull,” I continue. “Don’t they understand that sex is only sex?”

  “No, I don’t think they do.”

  “Emotions. Genders. Rules of propriety.” I groan. “They see themselves as modern, yet they have all these rules. About their marriages, the way they’re viewed in society. It’s as if they’re all politicians, every last one, afraid to step outside the lines. But didn’t he smell delicious? Like paper, smoke, and rain. I want him.”

  “You’ll have him.”

  “Mm. Yes, darling, I suppose we will.”

  ***

  My wife is right. He was scared of me. I liked it, the tension in his shoulders, the way his breath stopped altogether when I felt his skin with my mouth.

  Vonnie is a student of art, which is why Avery Collins will now be, I know, her sole obsession while we remain in Charleston. He has the look of a man who should be painted—perhaps has been, like one of those Ruben’s she finds so fascinating. He has the right contrast of light and dark—black hair and eyes, pale skin and lips.

  What a painting could not capture, however, is the way he moves, which is, so far, my favorite part of the man. True, he does not wear expensive clothes, but he walks like a man of high breeding. He walks with purpose but bends and dips with the grace of a bird in flight. I would like to see if his movements change without the clothes. In nothing but skin, will he be so confident?

  I think Vonnie could get him into bed with ease. I am her hurdle.

  Like so many American men, Avery surely knows the trite words of Leviticus: man lying with man as an abomination. My wife is certainly right about one thing. Americans are much more close-minded than we’d hoped when we had set off from Africa on our travels this time. We sought the decadent orgies of Amsterdam and the darkened, silk-strewn sex rooms of India. So far, in this American South, we have found religion, backhanded gossip, gorgeous women in too much lace, and buttoned-up, stifled men—career men.

  But Avery …

  “Darling?”

  I look up at my wife, whose skin looks darker in the orange firelight.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” I lift my scotch glass and feel the sudden urge to bow at her feet, kiss her lovely toes, and tongue up her thighs. My Aphrodite. My Cleopatra. My icy queen.

  ***

  I leave the hotel and head straight for Griffon—a seedy bar, hidden off Vendue Street. Tourists don’t know it’s there. There is no sign out front, just a wooden door, which I shove through and find the place packed with off-shift newsmen. It smells like cigars. My shoes stick to the floor as I pass crowded wooden tables.

  Unsurprisingly, Chas is at the bar. I sit next to him and order a double shot of whisky. I take it down before he even notices I’m there.

  “Collins!” He smacks me on the back. He is everything I am not: chubby, rich, and works merely to keep wind of Charleston gossip. “How’d it go with the crazy foreign couple, huh?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I mutter.

  Chas leans closer. “You all right?”

  “I don’t …” I shake my head. “No.”

  “What in hell’s name happened to you? You’re pale as a freshly laundered sheet.”

  I pause and gesture for another round. “It wasn’t a party. It was a proposition.”

  “A business proposition?”

  “No.”

  Chas is not that bright, but he’s bright enough to get my meaning. “They invited you to bed?”

  “Imagine my surprise.”

  “Shit, I’d get one off with that Egyptian goddess.”

  “I don’t think she’s Egyptian, Chas.”

  “Whatever the hell. I’d give her a go.”

  I sip my fourth drink of the day. “It was the husband who seemed most interested.”

  Chas winces. “Jesus, is that what these foreign people do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You should find out.”

  “Why?”

  “If you want to get Sikes out of the way at The Sentinel.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Chas elbows me. “Come on. We all know you broke the story about the mayor using party funds for personal use. Just because Sikes got the byline.”

  I turn to look at Chas with his blond hair and sweaty face. “Everyone knows about that?”

  “I know you want his job, and rumor has it Timothy Duke is winding up to buy out the Cleaver factories
on the harbor for his coffee business.”

  Now, he has my attention. My fingers slip away from the whisky, and I turn to face my only friend at the news. “Cleaver owns half this town.”

  “And apparently,” he finishes his beer, “he’s running out of cash.”

  I run my hands down my face and pause. Think, think. “Who’s your source, Chas?”

  “Does it matter? The rumor mill. If you got the real deal, the truth, from Timothy Duke … imagine what the editor would do for you then.”

  “Make me head news reporter.”

  Chas nods his head to me and to the bartender for another round. Above the din of low conversation around us, he says, “More money. More freedom. What’s a poor boy willing to do for his career, Avery?”

  “Fuck you, Chas.” I don’t pay my tab when I leave. I simply nod to my pal, and he understands he’s paying because he can.

  ***

  How sneaky of our nervous journalist to want to meet in public. He sent a letter to the hotel, asking Timothy and I to meet him at an outdoor café on upper East Bay Street.

  Before Avery arrives at the restaurant, I order two-dozen raw oysters and a bottle of champagne. The air outside is sticky and warm. The street feels crowded with buildings, some weather worn from ocean storms. The gas lamps that shimmer gold at night are dark now, and the sun reveals their dusty, stained glass. I find it all very reminiscent of Venice: a city on the brink of sinking beneath the salty sea.

  I wear a red satin gown and large black hat with black gloves. My eyes are circled in kohl, my lips dappled with rouge. People stare as they pass. Women whisper to each other. Men’s cheeks turn the color of fresh Beaujolais from the south of France.

  Then, he parts the crowd—a striking figure in a dark grey suit and vest, but still no tie. My tongue would fit perfectly in the shadowed crevice where neck meets collarbone. His cheekbones catch the early evening light, and beneath the halo of sun, tendrils of gold reveal themselves in the darkness of his hair.

  Timothy stands with his approach, but they do not shake hands. Then, Avery sits as I pour the champagne and wait.

  “I was not at all prepared for what I deduce you proposed yesterday,” he says.

  I just adore that strange accent, so much like my husband’s. It is a mismatch of places and times, trapped somewhere between New York and the low south—musical yet clipped and precise.

  “What exactly do you deduce we proposed?” I ask.

  “That I enter into a sexual relationship with a married couple.”

  I laugh and people around us turn to stare. I take Timothy’s hand. “Well, perhaps these Americans aren’t quite as close-minded as I thought.”

  “He hasn’t agreed to anything.” Timothy kisses my hand.

  “You can watch,” he says to my husband. He hasn’t touched his champagne.

  I chuckle once, deep in my chest. “That hardly seems fair.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  I look to Timothy, whose jaw is clenched, yet his eyes are amused. He knows, in the tangle of limbs, these things get confused. We’ve started like this before, with the nervous, conservative, sometimes even Christian young men who could never fathom the earth-shattering pleasure of my husband’s tongue. They tend to eventually change their tune, which is of course, what will happen to Avery.

  No one says no to Timothy. Not even me.

  ***

  My darling Vonnie did not wait for our table to be cleared before she asked for the check, and now, here we are, in our hotel suite. I watch my wife take Avery’s hand and lead him to our bed. She beckons to me.

  The light in our room is dim due to the setting sun. What light pours in is tinged blue—a reflection of the nearby sea. There is already a chair set for me at the foot of the old-fashioned four-poster as my wife requests, most mornings, I watch her please herself.

  I hide behind an expression of vague interest. Meanwhile, I shake inside in suspense at seeing Avery’s skin. I imagine he will be pale, perhaps a few darks hairs on his chest and thighs, but not much more as he has the face of a man who could never grow a beard. The contrast of his skin against the darker shade of my wife’s will be delicious, like melted chocolate poured over ice cream.

  I sit. I wait.

  Vonnie removes her hat and throws it to the room’s corner. She pulls off her gloves, one at a time, and drops them at her feet. She kicks out of her shoes, and even Avery seems surprised by her stature. My wife is small, petite, and easy to throw around. It is her persona that makes her seem so statuesque.

  She reaches for his shirt first, tries to touch the button nearest his throat, but he lifts her from the ground. He keeps his skin hidden as he carries her like his bride to the bed and lays her, carefully, down the center. He removes his gray suit jacket, nothing more. He then kisses her throat, once, twice. His long-fingered right hand sweeps across the satin fabric of her gown, down her stomach and farther, down her thigh.

  My wife makes the noise I adore—the breathless moan of a creature in heat.

  He does not look at me, but he knows I’m there. He shifts her body sideways, half off the bed, so I can watch as he kneels on the floor and lifts the red fabric up over her calves, her thighs, pressing chaste kisses up her dark skin as he goes. Then, he reveals her fully, and I am shocked—duly impressed even—with the way her flower blooms for him. She is wet, heaving, and he has done all this with nothing more than trifling kisses and the touch of his hand.

  I reconsider what kind of man we’ve invited to our marriage bed. Avery must have had many, many women to know how to make a body sing like that. Or, perhaps, his power over my wife’s imagination is stronger than I first assumed.

  He reduces her to a whimpering mass of flesh. She screams. It is over too soon—so soon that I barely notice Avery slip back into his suit coat and then disappear into the ever-darkening night.

  ***

  As I unlock my dingy apartment, I still taste her on my lips. I rush inside, don’t bother to lock up, and drink whisky from the bottle. I swallow and drink again, this time spitting onto the floor. What have I done? What have I done to a married woman?

  The door opens behind me. Of course, he followed me from the hotel, and now, he means to kill me. Was that the game all along, to kill me for tonguing his wife? I deserve it—no time to atone. I think of all the offhand remarks with Chas, the cruel internal dialogue at those stupid society events, but this … this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. Now, I will die for it with no hope of forgiveness or a final confession. The man comes to send me to Hell.

  I don’t back away or hold up my fists when he approaches. My guilt freezes me to the spot, so much so that when he sticks his tongue in my mouth, instead of a knife in my chest, I don’t fight back. But then, I do. My fists push against his chest and our mouths disengage.

  My reflex is to throw one good punch at his jaw, but I miss. He catches my arm in his hand and twists it behind my back until an unwanted cry escapes my throat. Our feet tumble and wrestle beneath us, but damn it, Timothy Duke is much larger than me.

  He twists my arm higher until I fear it might break and then pushes my face down against the cluttered desk in the corner. I smell ink and stale tobacco. It takes me a moment to recognize my vulnerable position. He has me bent over, pinned. His body weight crushes the air from my lungs, and he kicks at my feet, spreading my legs farther apart. I panic and renew the fight, but it’s useless.

  “Don’t,” I mutter, pathetically begging.

  A sound like airy laughter escapes through his nose. “I knew you were a fighter. Could see it in your hands.”

  “I shouldn’t have touched your wife.”

  “You think that’s why I followed you here? Because I’m jealous?” His grip loosens on my arm. Not enough for me to escape, but his fingers now move against my wrist, almost a caress. “You were magnificent.”

  I take a shuddering breath.

  “I only wanted you to know, if I’d been in that be
d, you wouldn’t have left until I was finished with you.”

  He lets me go, and I almost tumble to the floor. He adjusts his impeccable suit as he crosses the meager distance from the back of my apartment to the front. With his hand on the doorknob, he glances back.

  “We’ll expect you tomorrow, the hotel at six.” He smiles. “Don’t worry. I’ll merely watch. And I believe Vonnie has a special treat.”

  Timothy closes the door behind him. I fall over, down to my knees. It will take an entire bottle of whisky for me to find sleep this night.

  ***

  Today, while dearest Timothy pays a dull business visit to the warehouse district, I sit on the veranda and sketch Avery. I’m not sure he’ll be back, but Timothy is resolute.

  I have no formal training as an artist, and I never need a live model when I work. I can invoke images from years past, if I like. For this sketch, I need only look to the night prior—the vision of him between my legs.

  I take a pencil and begin. I focus on his eyes, which are wrinkled on the edges like a seaman’s. Those creases are perhaps the only indicator that we deal not with a mere boy but a grown man—that and his sexual acumen.

  Avery’s eyebrows are thick and match his dark hair. There are small, very small, freckles on the bridge of his nose, and a delicate mole above his left eyebrow that matches the one on the side of his neck. Slim cheeks, like hollows, cast out light.

  I will not draw his mouth, not until I taste it.

  ***

  It’s hard to listen to Cleaver’s solicitor due to the dream I enjoyed this morning of Avery tied to a bed in Algiers, the one Vonnie and I used when we first met.

  In the dream, he was on his stomach. His hands were secured to the bedframe by ties from Vonnie’s silk robes. The skin of his back was covered in sweat. Tangled in sheets, I can’t see the parts I long for, but the sight of his back … his submission …

  “Are you a madman? Offering a price like that? We could get twice that!”

  “Then, find someone willing to pay.” I smile and light a cigar as I slowly walk away.