028

It was 9.20 the following morning when the telephone rang loudly in the living room, reaching the bedroom through the corridor and the slightly ajar door. June rumbled against Jon’s back, but kept her arm around his thin waist and her hand tucked underneath his body, praying that the phone would give up soon. It insisted, though, and June took a deep breath. Jon’s hair still smelled as fresh as it had after the shower he’d taken before dinner the previous night. June still made use of a few extra moments to set her mind in the right space and time. She felt as if it was three in the morning, but the bright light of day was already bathing the bedroom through the white, thin, translucent curtains of the window by the head of the bed. June also remembered that the sky was already tainted with a light shade of orange when Jon had finally fallen asleep, exhausted, in her arms.

The telephone, however (or whoever was on the other end of the line), seemed to care very little about their resting status.

"Dad?", she spoke almost in a complaint after grudgingly getting up, putting on a robe and sleep-walking towards the living-room.

"For Christ’s sake sweetheart, are you alright?", a deep voice, full of concern reached June’s ear through the heavy, outmoded device that still had a disk dial instead of buttons.

"Yeah…dad? What is it?...", in spite of having cleared her throat before speaking, her voice nonetheless thick and low, "…I was-"

"Your mother and I have been going crazy, Henry’s mother phoned her half an hour ago and told her that the cabin had caught fire?"

June rolled her eyes, then immediately her stomach clenched and her mind was violently put back into reality.

"Whuh..what?", she stammered in an unconscious effort to earn some extra time to wrap her mind around what her father was telling her. How much more information had leaked?

"Is it true? We tried to reach you on the cell phone but apparently you’ve turned it off". As her father spoke, June glanced at the device on the coffee table and of course, it had run out of batteries.

"No, no, dad…listen", she kneaded her eyes and cheeks with her hands and took a deep breath before proceeding to patiently explain to her father how the facts had actually developed.

Jon, feeling the absence of the warm body that was spooning him a few minutes before, awoke gradually until he felt the sting in his bladder that notified his body had needs to tend to. With his eyes still closed, he sat on the bed and reached for the deep blue sweatpants with oversize white letters that read LIONS vertically on the left leg and that June had handed to him the night before, claiming that it belonged to her brother. He padded barefoot towards the bathroom and briefly overheard June’s patient explanation before closing the door behind him. On his way back a few minutes later, he noticed June continued on the phone, and out of sheer curiosity, he entered the room right across the corridor from the bathroom that contained two twin beds, a cupboard, a small table and a metal book rack. The wall was still covered with posters, and John could quickly tell who had picked them: Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, the Smiths and Queen were among his friend John’s favorite bands. Apparently June’s taste for vintage photography ,- a good number of which gracefully adorned the walls of her house in New Hersey -, had started at an early age, for they almost completely covered her “side” of the bedroom.

As he observed, Jon noticed that the waist of the sweatpants, a size too big for his lean frame, and also for his rather moderate height in comparison to his friend noticeable stature, had slid down way below his waist, barely clinging to the curve of his firm, round ass. He pulled it up slightly as by hooking his thumb on the elastic waist as he visually rummaged through the objects that covered the small, dark wooden table next to the square window. It contained a few more piles of books, some finished notepads and many photo-frames. Jon’s inquisitive mind responded to the hidden secrets that might be hidden inside the pages of the notebooks. He adored and admired her writing, and his mind began to fantasize of stories written by a teenage June. Being her a person that didn’t let out much about herself, her written words felt like another way of discovering her, but by the lighter tone of June’s voice, he realized he didn’t have much time.

However, he couldn’t refrain from bending over and narrowing his eyes to take a closer look at the frames that contained pictures of brother and sister at different ages and with different friends. Jon’s lips crooked in a lopsided smile when he discovered himself in one of them. For what he could see it was apparently taken on the plane the band had used during the Keep the faith tour.

"Oh…I see…", her father finally spoke with relief, "…it’s a good thing that your brother’s on his way then, he’ll help you clean up and fix whatever needs to be fixed", he finished breathlessly, and a moment after he did, June screamed in a whisper.

"What?! Shit! No!". Regardless of her ,- unknowingly useless-, effort not to wake Jon up, her words reached Jon’s ears through the corridor and he, feeling somewhat discovered peeping, hastily but slightly worriedly returned to the bedroom and into the bed.

"No, dad", June changed her tone to a more reassuring one so she wouldn’t leave room for any further reasons of concern for her father. "There’s no need, dad, seriously, I can handle this ", she lied, but being truthful was something she’d already abandoned the moment she entered Jon’s house just 6 days before. She had to be in New York by Monday, it was Friday and the reparations would take at least a couple of days, provided she found someone that worked during the weekend. This, she knew, was rather unlikely in Glenn. His father, however, seemed unable to listen to the voice of reason.

" John left twenty minutes ago when we couldn’t reach you, he’ll be there in a couple hours tops". Perceiving the deep worry in her father’s voice, June sighed and stood up from the armchair.

"OK, dad…but please don’t you guys worry, everything’s… ", she said as she approached the bedroom and leaned on the doorframe, gazing at the glorious body lying on the bed, all entangled with the white sheets, "…fine, just fine ", she repeated, almost ironically and said goodbye. How the hell hadn’t she been able to foresee it.

Jon lazily half-opened his eyes.

"Mornin’", he said with a deep, husky voice and a lazy smile on his lips.

"John will be here in an hour", she spoke matter-of-factly and smiled warily.

"Shit", Jon raked his hands through his already tousled hair and rolled over to lie on his back. He took a deep breath and stared at June, an unspoken question lay in his wide-open blue eyes.

"I’ll make some coffee", she said before spinning on her heels and disappearing from Jon’s sight. If he hadn’t known better, and judging by June’s tone, Jon would have thought that John’s visit was expected, but he was a stranger to the fact that inside her head she was busy counting the minutes and seconds they could afford to before her brother walked through the front door.

Less than ten minutes later, June placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of Jon as he sat on a stool by the table. She leaned back against the edge of the table, slightly bowing her head to address Jon through the light cloud of cigarette smoke that floated in the air and drifted slowly away. Her look of indecision didn’t go unnoticed to him, so he took her hand in his, gripping her tightly.

"How much time do we got?"

"Another forty minutes, if we’re lucky", she replied.

"And if we’re not?"

"My brother will rip your head off like a plug"

Jon couldn’t  but burst in laughter at the mental image that flashed in his mind. As unlikely as it was that John would ever go through with such threat, Jon still wandered how his reaction would be.

"I need a escape plan, then ", he said, unable to prevent a slight wariness to slip into his tone.

"More than ever ", she replied after doubting for an instant.

"What time you think you can make it to Detroit?", he asked.

      "At five, depending on my convincing abilities", she answered. She took a sip of coffee and noticed Jon’s uneasy silence. "Anxious? I thought you were some sort of escape-artist", she added hastily, running her fingers soflty through the thin strands of short, dark hair of his temple. Jon acknowledged with a soft chuckle before taking a sip of his coffee.  At a certain point he opened his mouth to speak, but his lips broke into a shy grin and June smiled back conspiratorially.
 "Perhaps we should change the subject", Jon suggested, the blue smoke veiling his face. "Gets me frustrated". Actually, he’d been so tangled up in this illicit adventure, seized of the erotic excesses they had been indulging in, that this emergency landing in reality and its subsequent deprival of his enjoyment was perceived as a nuisance.
  "Yeah, maybe that's what we need", June said, tousling his hair as they smiled at each other.

Her predicament seemed safely hidden behind her calm exterior. To ask Jon to leave was the easy way out, but it made her feel somewhat childish and stupid. They were grown people for God’s sake, and they were discussing escape plans? To ask him to stay, on the other side, would be putting her brother, his friendship with Jon and maybe even their business relationship in an uncomfortable situation, tos ay the least. Torn thus between two alternatives, June found it hard to hide a tiny waver of insecurity in her voice.

"They must have restored electricity during the morning…you hungry?", she asked meekly, even when she herself couldn’t swallow a bite.

"Nah, I’m good with the coffee", he lied and inhaled a puff of smoke. He was actually starving, but he put the cigarette out on the ashtray that lay on the dining table and looked for June’s eyes. His brow creased.

"Hey…", Jon tilted his chin up and grabbed her waist with one hand while he kept the other wrapped around the coffee mug. "I can stay…that simple", he began and paused, pursing his lips, gauging her reaction to the suggestion, but June interrupted him before he was able to continue.

"You know it’s not that simple, Jon. It would be simple if what we were doing was simple", she air-quoted her last  “simple” with one hand, while with the other she held the coffee mug. Jon smiled, nodding.

"But we’re here…now, why make it more complicated than it is?", he asked in a shrug, holding her gaze, and June stared back at him for a long moment, holding her tongue.

"Simple as in 'Yeah, we’re just fucking but don’t worry, it’s gonna be over soon'?", she chortled ironically and lifted her eyes up to focus on a humidity stain on the ceiling, in an effort to hide from Jon the sting of shame she felt for putting such a label on something that for her meant so much more. She failed miserably. 

"Look at me", he said, "You used to lie better than that". She obeyed by bowing her head and found his lips cramped in an arrogant pout while his hand that had left her waist, was now crawling up her thigh and under her robe. She couldn’t help but smile warmly and sigh.

"I wanna do the right thing", she answered now with complete honesty, fully aware, though, that doing the right thing and keeping a secret weren’t necessarily two compatible concepts. "And it doesn’t feel right to look at you and ask you to leave". June’s voice was a soft sigh.

"Then don’t"

June found it hard to wear the right expression as all the thoughts swirled in her mind. She took a deep breath and squeezed as much sincerity as she could manage in a few words.

"Nothing good can come from him knowing…it’s just better if we...", she trailed off, secretly begging him to end the discussion and put her out of her misery by leaving voluntarily.

"Fair enough", he withdrew his hand from under her robe and offered it to her, palm up. She smiled and offered hers back, stifling a smirk as they shook hands.

He let go of her hand and gulped down a long sip of coffee like a dose of medicine before contemplating her in silence for a few moments. His sleep the past few days hadn’t been the best in terms of quantity, and the prospect of another journey made him restless. He abandoned the mug on the table and stood up to press a long kiss on June’s lips. Neither of them couldn’t hide that their excitement of being found somewhat stirred their desire.  Jon smiled against June’s lips. He could live with hiding. For now.

She moaned slightly and couldn’t help but scraping his abdomen with the tip of her short, burgundy painted nails, then her fingers brushed slightly through the thin fuzz under his navel. June chortled when she felt her womb twitch with need for him, if she gave in, she would have let her body decide over her reason.

"This itches", she spoke against his lips.

"I’ll take care of that soon", he kissed her on the cheek, "but I got some other escaping to do first", he spoke in a deep whisper. playing with the words.

"It’s gettin' late", she reminded him, her voice barely a whisper. He nodded and headed towards the corridor, purposely and exaggeratedly dragging his feet in mock complaint. With his index and thumb resting on his hipbones, he gave her an inquiring but amused look and she couldn’t help but chortle softly. "Go…go", she ordered softly and waved a hand at him, willing herself to ignore the fact that her body was saying exactly the opposite. She was almost wishing he would stop being such a gentleman, decide for her, give a fuck about what she wanted and just stay, but she’d made her bed and she’d have to lie in it.

While Jon got dressed and gathered his belongings, June walked out onto the veranda, careful not to step on the carbonized area that covered two thirds of the floor. Only a few minutes afterwards Jon wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his chest against her back. She smelled of something that resembled lavender, only sweeter. With one hand he removed the strands of hair that covered her neck and grazed gently, before burying his face against her shoulder, grudgingly accepting that their encounters might always be like this, hiding behind walls and curtains and doors. The rest of the world would never belong to them.

Jon reached for the back pocket of his jeans and extracted a note. He slid it inside June’s robe’s front pocket and spoke against her ear playfully.

"I’ll wait for you here, at four", he emphasized his choice of time almost sternly.

"What if I get lost and can’t find the place?", she teased with that ineffably sweet look she had.

"You won’t"

June turned her head and looked askance at him, his mischievous expression comforting her, for under any other circumstances his commands could sound fairly frightening. She moved to turn around and face him, then stood on her toes to press her forehead against his.

"Baby, I…"

June shook her head in silence and sealed his lips with her index finger.

     "I’ll be there", she said.
  "At four", he reminded.
  "At four"

Jon nodded and added, "I’ll be waiting"

June brushed his cheek with her carmine lips, but Jon captured them in a brief but savage kiss.

After parting the kiss, he walked down the steps of the veranda as June stood holding the note in her hand, following him with her eyes until he got on the car and drove away. If her maths were correct and Jon didn’t mess up her indications of how to find the way out, he’d be able to avoid crossing paths with John. Just in case, he put on his cap and sunglasses. The tainted glass of the car would hopefully do the rest.

After the car disappeared from her sight, June left some minutes go by, then opened the note and sighed heavily. She recalled all the stories of unsolicited and illicit love she’d read, and they had one thing in common: they always ended bad…really bad.

She changed and went down to the lake, walking some distance along the shore. It was a gloriously sunny-and-warm day, the lake wore a pale-green color, and the air felt thinner and purer than the day before. Some boats added extra notes of color here and there. Far along the coast she could see that some people lying in the sun and bathing. When she came back she sat on the steps of the veranda, barely thinking until, after a short while, John showed up with freshly baked bread and fresh cheese. His smile told June that one, he hadn’t run into anything or anybody suspicious on his way and two, that he’d been notified things were under control. That and the fact that he was accompanied by Mr. Harrison. Mr. Harrison usually took care of the tasks related to the cabin’s maintenance, as well as that of practically the rest of the cabins in the whole area and therefore knew everyone of them practically by heart. That was probably the reason why John had taken longer to arrive than expected.

June smiled gratefully and her brother grinned back showing his perfectly white teeth through his fleshy lips. June was genuinely impressed; Mr. Harrison had a reputation of not being able to be reached in such short notice, not to mention to be convinced of working during the weekend.

Brother and sister had breakfast under the sun on a rug they usually used for that purpose while they observed the workers hastily and nimbly tear the carbonized pieces of wood. June quietly chortled when she discovered herself smiling with relief that everything seemed back to normal.

"It’s probably gonna take ‘til Sunday…", John forced his voice over the sound of the disk cutter. "I hope you don’t mind that we stay here…when were you planning on leaving?"

"Well actually…", she lifted her head up to look at her brother, but she thanked he had his sunglasses on so she wouldn’t have to lie straight into his eyes, "…I got a meeting in Detroit…". At four. She cleared her throat, "…at four"
"And you’re not coming back? But you’ve just arrived!", he reasoned out loud and wrinkled his nose, seemingly determined to test her resolve.
"They don’t call them unforeseen circumstances out of whim now, do they?", she asked with a crooked smile product of the amusement that brought to her the fact that she was talking to the very embodiment of the term “unforeseen circumstances” itself. "Carl thought it was good that I seized the opportunity and meet with a couple of investors". It wasn’t a complete lie, for her manager had actually arranged the said meeting, only three days later and in New York. "Besides, my plans for a relaxing weekend seem fairly ruined". John couldn’t do anything but nod in agreement. "But you go ahead and have fun", June grinned at her brother.
"I got a lot of job to get done, and speak of the devil, I need to call Don Corleone and tell him I’m not gonna be able to see him off at the airport on Monday", he said and retrieved his cell phone from his leather bag, making his playful tone evident, since there hadn’t been such an arrangement.

June felt an invisible thread tug at her insides through the distance, pulling her to the blue eyes fixed on the road to Detroit. She felt him in her blood and in the fire that burnt inside her gut as she lay on the rug, holding herself up with both elbows, her chin tilted up to face the warm sun. She glanced at John's watch. At four. She’d have to get moving if she wanted to make it on time, and boy did she want to.

…

Twenty minutes before four she quickened her steps in front of the facade of the hotel that emerged like a ship amongst the surrounding buildings. Once inside she announced herself at the front desk, as naturally as she could, but the clerk, who must have been used to handling the false identities of a good number of celebrities and other influential figures of the moment, didn’t seem the least affected by the name she gave, and even less by the fact that the face in front of him was also the one that graced the cover of The New Yorker that lay on the magazine rack scarce six feet away.
"Of course ma’am", he said, and gestured with his hand, "This way, please"

The echo of her steps accompanied her through the corridor towards the elevator.  On the 23^rd floor, the corridor that led to Jon’s room was illuminated by the glow of the yellowish light that came from the ornate chandeliers. Her steps were silenced by the immaculate carpet that covered it end to end.

The bellboy left immediately after leaving June in front of the double door of the suite, which opened a few moments later.

"Ms. Rigby", Jon greeted with a controlled solemnity that was betrayed by the smile in his deep blue eyes and mirrored by the almost transparent green of June’s.

"Mr. Raccoon, I believe", she said, imitating his faux-formal tone.

"Please", he offered as he pulled the door wide open. He looked well-rested, freshly shaved and showered, and smelled sinfully delicious. His dark jeans, waist button undone, hung enticingly low from his hipbones, exposing his chiseled lower abdomen.

June stepped in and observed the spacious lounge that preceded the bedroom,  hidden behind double walnut wood doors, flanked by a pair of plain marble columns that crept towards the minimalistic, light wood paneling of the ceiling. The rest of the color pallet was completed by the different coffee and cream tones of the sofa, carpets and curtains that covered the curtain-wall.

She lazily removed the thin, almost see-through ice-blue jacket that covered the black, silver-strapped tank-top that matched her black capri pants, and tossed it on the back of one of the armchairs, next to her small, dark-grey purse. He approached her and caressed her face with his index finger.

"Nobody knows we’re here…", he spoke softly, with a faux-menacing tone, " …so there won’t be any…interruptions". A devilish smirk tugged at the corners of his lips and June’s lips parted slightly in response.

"Mmm…a secret?", she asked with a thick voice, and he nodded silently before pulling her into his arms.

"Uh-huh…and I wanted to share it with you", he said, in a barely audible whisper.

In a flash they were one on top of the other, June sinking under Jon’s weight in the soft cushions of the sofa, their lips locked in a carnivorous kiss. Jon practically ripped her clothes apart, forcing her in a way that both surprised her and excited her tremendously. She surrendered, not being able to find inside her desire-clouded mind, one single reason why she should offer any resistance.