Maybe

26

Maybe Taylor.

SAM’S PHONE IS buzzing.

“I need to get that,” he says.

“Tough shit.”

“Maybe, seriously. I need to answer my phone. You’ve had your fun. Now untie me.”

It has been fun, but there’s more fun to be had. She looks at the man who’s been such a powerful influence on her life the past twelve months. He’s on the floor on his side, naked, curled in a fetal position, arms tied behind his back, wrists cuffed. Knees tied, ankles cuffed. A twelve-inch tail of red tubing protrudes from his backside, courtesy of the butt plug she’s placed in his rectum. She was in the process of forcing a red plastic ball in Sam’s mouth when his cell phone started buzzing.

She opens it, puts it to his ear.

Sam says, “Hello?”

She hears an altered voice coming through the ear piece. With his ear blocking most of the sound, the words aren’t clear to her.

But Sam seems alarmed.

He says things like, “No!” and “You’re kidding!” and “What’re you talking about?” and “You can’t quit!” and “What’s going to happen to me?”

Maybe’s heard enough. While she enjoys humiliating her boyfriend, no one else is going to upset him on her watch. She pulls the phone from Sam’s ear and says, “Who is this?”

Sam screams, “No!”

The person on the other end immediately stops talking, but it’s too late. She heard the last few words, and recognized him.

“It’s you!” she says.

The voice says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Maybe says, “I’d know your voice anywhere. Just because it’s altered doesn’t mean it’s different. You called me every day for the past year. Every day until…”

She looks at Sam, sees fear in his eyes. He struggles to break free from the cuffs.

But the cuffs are real.

From some dark place in the pit of Maybe’s stomach the anger starts like a smoldering chunk of coal. Within seconds it flares up as if coaxed by a bellows. The flame rises through her body, flushing her neck, ears, and face. Her eyes narrow.

Sam stops trying to break free long enough to say, “Please!”

But the word didn’t come from a man’s voice. It was more like the sound a whimpering, sniveling little boy might make.

When Maybe speaks into the phone her words are measured, but firm.

She says, “What’s going on here?”

The voice on the other end pauses, then says, “I knew nothing about this business with Sam until I heard the tape.”

“What tape?”

“Sam had a friend, Doc Howard, who recently passed away. I was going through Doc’s things today and came across a tape of a phone conversation he had with Sam a few days ago. I’m going to play you the tape.”

And he does.

She stares straight ahead. Blinks twice. Then presses the record button on Sam’s phone and says, “Please. Play it once more.”

He does.

Then he hangs up.

Then Maybe hangs up.

She looks at Sam, trussed like a turkey.

He whimpers, “I love you!”

She shakes her head, hoping to force her brain to comprehend what she just heard.

“Kimberly!” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“You love me, don’t you Sam?”

He strains to break the handcuffs on his wrists and ankles, but again, these aren’t lovers’ toys, they’re regulation handcuffs. Sam flops around the floor like the fish she caught many years ago when she was a kid. The fish flipped and flapped and kept trying to hurl itself back into the lake. Eventually the fish gave up and accepted its fate.

Only then did Maybe kick it back into the water.

Sam looks like a trussed turkey when he’s not flopping around like a fish out of water. A trussed turkey with a heavily-bandaged beak.

“You love me, Sam?”

“I do! I swear to God!”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

She presses the rewind button and says, “Don’t lie to God.”

“I wasn’t! I was just-”

She presses the speaker button, so he can hear the tape. Without question, it’s Sam’s voice. And what he’s saying is, “Kimberly Creed is inferior to me in every possible way. And now I’ve made her my fuck pony.”

She presses the stop button to observe the effect these words have on her boyfriend.

As she expected, Sam doesn’t look so good. His face has turned pale. His lips are trembling.

She presses the play button so Sam can hear his voice say, “Fucking her was child’s play! And I’ll continue to fuck her as long as it suits me, though she’s not much of a lay. If not for the connection to Creed, I wouldn’t travel across town to do her.”

She’s so hurt, so dejected, all she can manage to say is, “Sam.”

He says, “I can explain.”

But he can’t. She sees his mind racing to come up with something plausible to say, but the tape blindsided him so completely he’s got…nothing.

She closes Sam’s cell phone, tosses it on the bed. Then she walks across the room to retrieve something from her handbag.

He sees it and says, “Don’t do this!”

She moves toward him.