Chapter 10
That Which Is Caesar’s
We drove home in silence. I mean, what do you say after you've had the sexual experience of a lifetime? I glanced over at Yvette. She sat there, abnormally still, her big boobs gently bouncing in response to Justine's powerful rumbling. I would have expected to see a little animation in her, especially after the events of the last few hours, but it seemed as though she were trying to be invisible, a trick she could pull off relatively easily.
My dick was already hard again, the soft jostling of Yvette's bosom the cause. I so wanted to put my hand upon her neck and guide her shiny head down to my lap, just to round out the best day of my life, but even a Neanderthal like me has moments of clarity, where I realize that it isn’t all about me. But the closer we came to the city, the more this post-coital quiet was becoming unnerving, and I could tell that her silence had little to do with a well-deserved afterglow.
One of the many things I love about my bitchin’ ‘vette is that she is not a chatterbox; when she has something to say she says it (unlike so many people who speak simply to hear the sound of their own voice), but this silence was like no other I had ever not heard from her. It wasn’t a thoughtful silence or a wistful silence, or even a pensive silence. It wasn’t the mournful silence of a griever or the oppressive silence that sometimes precedes a January rain, nor was it even the desperate silence of a gambler who has just doubled-down against the dealer’s six, only to find her hole card is a five. No, this was a pregnant silence; a heaving, panting, fully dilated bitch of a silence, poised to pop out a litter of little silences that threatened to rip us apart.
I began to think she might be upset with me for having repeatedly called her Justine while she was fucking me (screaming the name of a former girlfriend is bad enough, but calling your wife by your car's name is for damn sure grounds for divorce in all fifty states, and very likely Italy as well). But as the miles wore on I began to get the feeling that this wasn't so much a silence as it was a sadness. "Yvette, I..."
"Please don't say anything, Roddy," she said, cutting gently across me, her voice sounding hoarse, "let's just enjoy the moment, okay?"
"Okay, baby," I replied softly, or at least as softly as Justine's three-hundred and fifty horses would allow and still be understood.
I continued looking over at her from time to time. It really was difficult to tell where Justine’s upholstery ended and Yvette’s body began. I had wanted to merge the two of them, and had successfully done so, but I wondered if that action hadn’t pushed my sweet girl over the edge, making her think that I preferred as an object. But as we chewed up more highway, albeit slower than I would like due to my desire to enjoy every last minute I could with my ‘vette in this form, I began to sense a definite unease from her. Her breasts were actually heaving, rising and falling rapidly, her hands unconsciously grasping at the vinyl seat of which she was almost a part, and most worrisome of all, she was biting her lower lip, her bright white teeth visible against the shiny teal backdrop of her mouth, apparently unconcerned about the damage she might be doing to her showroom finish.
When I was a kid we had a cat, Elsie, so named by my older sister Lillith. She was a little alley cat we’d found under our porch, half-starved, obviously abandoned. She was sweet and affectionate, with huge eyes that melted my mom’s heart in seconds (cat people aren’t born, they’re made). She nuzzled up against all of us, claiming her territory, purring loudly when my sister picked her up and held her in her arms, whereupon she closed her eyes and fell asleep, thus sealing the deal.
She was a great cat, that cleared the house of mice in no time, although she did have this nasty penchant for bringing these huge cockroaches into the house, clamped in her jaws to show us what a great hunter she was. She would sit there looking up at us, expecting praise, the indestructible bastard lodged in her teeth still very much alive and kicking, which she would then release into the house, after which much screaming would ensue. Like pretty much all cats she recognized no rules, and there was no place that was off-limits to her.
One summer evening my dad took me with him to KFC, for some of that extra crispy chicken which everyone knows they shouldn’t eat but decide to tempt a quadruple bypass anyway. We got less than a mile down the road before we realized there was another passenger in the car with us. Elsie climbed up onto the back seat, her eyes wide in fear as the world without moved past us at speeds she couldn’t comprehend. She had apparently been exploring and had gotten into Dad’s car before we’d left, and decided that the back seat was the perfect place to take a nap. I tried to calm her down but she wasn’t having any. She paced back and forth across the top of the back seat, her rib cage visibly expanding, damn near hyperventilating, until she jumped down into the well behind my dad’s seat, lay down, and began panting. I told Dad we needed to turn around and go home, that she was going to give herself a heart attack, but he just sat in his seat and smiled, and said not to worry, and that she’d be okay before long. And he was right. Once we got that big-ass bucket of chicken from the drive-through, Elsie seemed to forget her fear, climbed into the front seat with me, and began nuzzling me in earnest, her carnivorous need outweighing her terror at being inside a moving car.
That memory came racing back to me as I watched my bride’s bosom heave in apparent fear, her fists clenching and unclenching as we pulled up to a stop light about a mile from home. “Yvette, are you all ri…?” I started, but she put a hand on my thigh, gripping it so tightly I thought she might actually damage some nerves down there.
“Roddy, let’s not go home!” she said, her voice panicked, swiveling her head toward me, and despite her elastomer shell I could see in her face the same terror that I had in my poor kitten’s. “Let’s just…let’s just drive for a while, okay? We can just go, and…and never come back!”
Jesus Christ, I thought, she’s frightened out of her wits. I put my hand upon hers, felt the warmth of her pseudo-skin, noting that underneath her shiny exterior her hands were probably clammy as hell. “‘vette, my love,” I said, trying to inject a note of calm that I wasn’t feeling, worried that she might be having a psychotic episode caused by Justine’s imminent departure and the guilt associated with that, “I know what you’re upset about. It’s okay. Trust me. It’s time for me to give up childish things. And besides,” I continued, giving her my very best Cary Grant smile, “where can we go, with you looking like a naked, big boobed Smurf?”
I had expected my feeble joke to at least draw a nervous laugh from her, but like my poor, terrified cat she wasn’t having any either. I looked into her teal eyes, mentally kicking myself for having driven the woman of my dreams officially crazy. She turned her head down and away, still panting slightly, not wanting to make eye contact with me. “Roddy…” she began, almost a gasp, “I-I just want you to know…that…”
The blare of a car horn startled us both out of our private little bubble. I took my hand from hers and put the car in gear, doing my best to get us through the intersection without plowing into the median, or taking out some old pedestrian wearing his ever-present oxygen backpack. We continued on down the single-lane road, me frantically praying that she could hold it together until we arrived safely home, for she had curled up into a fetal ball in her seat, gasping softly.
Congratulations, you selfish prick, my inner voice said, you finally succeeded in fucking her up completely. I shook my head angrily, not in denial, but at the truth of my unspoken thoughts. For a few hours I’d had her back, my beautiful bride, polymer-free and happy, but I had pissed it away for a few minutes of a juvenile fantasy; where the rubber meets the road, I had to admit that I really was a weak-willed, selfish bastard.
I turned the corner onto our block, never so glad to see home; I could put Yvette to bed and let her rest, clean up my ride and turn her over to her new owner, and hopefully begin the healing process. It was therefore the greatest surprise to me when I pulled into the driveway to find Don Carlos already waiting for us, slightly bent over, casually examining the Tecoma bush that flanks the walk to the rear of the house. He turned his head as we came to a stop, smiled and straightened up, and began elegantly making his way around to my side of the car.
“Yvette!” I whispered frantically, my balls pretty much pulled up to my abdomen. “Don’t move a muscle. He might not see you. I’ll try to distract him, and you can go into the house.”
“No,” she said flatly, straightening her limbs. She put her hand on the door latch and swiveled her head to look at me, her face completely devoid of expression. “I’m sorry, Rod, but you were right. It is time for you to give up childish things.” And with that she opened the door and stepped out of the car, just as my employer put both of his hands on my door, his mirrored sunglasses glinting in the late afternoon sun.
“Buenas tardes, Rodrigo,” he said silkily, his smile no longer the jovial one he usually wore, but rather wolfish. “I have come to take what is mine.”
* * * * * *
“I can explain, Don Carlos.” We stood in the driveway, or rather he leaned against Justine’s passenger-side front fender, as relaxed as could be, while I stood facing him, trying to keep my legs from shaking, failing miserably.
“No explanations are necessary. All you need to do is sign her over to me. Do not worry about the mileage and such,” he said, holding a pen out to me, “I will fill in the necessary later.”
I reached into the car and opened the glove compartment, and retrieved her title with trembling fingers, unable to shake the feeling that I was suffocating. I was fired, that much was certain. He hadn’t said as much, but I knew the words would be coming soon. I signed my name on the line, gently for fear of scratching Justine’s finish, as I was using her roof as a writing surface.
“At first I thought it was drugs, you know?” he said, taking Justine’s title from me and slipping it into a leather-bound folder. “People don’t change their habits, not all of a sudden. Leaving early, calling in sick, behavior that is most unlike you, Rodrigo. And then out of the blue, you offer me your Justine. I knew then that it was serious.”
My mind was torn in two, wondering if my soon to be ex-employer was about to have me arrested for embezzlement, while at the same I wondered how Yvette was doing. I could hear her, moving about in the house. She wasn’t crying, which at least was a positive sign. Meanwhile Don Carlos was looking up at me, apparently waiting for me to speak, perhaps expecting an apology, or maybe waiting for me to drop to my knees and kiss his ring in abject debasement, all of which I was willing to do. But this whole scene felt completely unreal, as though I was in a play, and everyone else knew their parts but me.
“She is beautiful, I have to give you that.” He opened the artfully engraved leather folder and took out an 8x10 photograph. There was Yumi, standing on our patio, her beautiful body reflecting the underwater lights from our swimming pool.
“At first I felt guilty, having you watched, but I could not believe my eyes when Paco,” he jerked his head backward indicating one of the two men who stood at the foot of the driveway, men Raymond Chandler would have referred to as ‘tough Mexicans’, “showed me this picture. My feelings of guilt vanished once I’d realized that you had stolen from me. Me, of all people!
“But as my guilt had vanished, so had my anger. I know a thing or two about beauty, Rodrigo, and what you had done to your beautiful Yvette was far greater than anything Michelangelo could have created. Not only are you an artist when it comes to cars, but you are also a Master when it comes to turning women into true works of art.”
This was not at all the kind of response I had expected from him. Was he actually condoning what I’d done? He put the photo back in the folder, and hugged it to his chest, sighing slightly. “Yvette, come out here, please.”
She emerged from the open center door of the garage, still very much teal, absolutely nude, and completely unembarrassed about it. I started to move in front of her, to shield her from prying eyes, but I just as quickly realized, as had Yvette apparently, that it was too late for that. She stopped when she reached the front of the car. She didn’t look at me, nor at Don Carlos either. She simply stood there, a beautiful blue-green statue, the sun behind her wreathing her in an almost holy light. “Yes, she is indeed beautiful, Rodrigo. I only wish that I could congratulate you on your achievement.” He sighed again. “It is time, Yvette.” He turned and walked around the back end of his car.
I looked over at her, confused. “Yvette…?"
“I’m sorry, Roddy…” she said thickly, her teal eyes absently fixed upon a spot about a thousand yards away. “I…have to go now.”
I looked at her in disbelief, unable to take in what she was saying. “Go where, ‘vette?”
She closed her eyes, as though staring at nothing had become tiresome. “I’m sorry, Rod,” she said tonelessly. “It…I can’t…”
“It is quite simple, Rodrigo.” I turned to see him looking at me, leaning his forearms against the driver’s side roof, his expression wolfish again. “The polymer that is coating Yvette’s body belongs to me.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, my voice taking on an unpleasantly shrill quality as the ugly truth became apparent. “What, you think you’re going to take her from me? You think you fucking own her?”
“I do own her, Rodrigo. Ask her yourself if you do not believe me.”
I turned back to her, unable to believe what I was hearing. Yvette was standing as she had been, her face now fixed in that mannequin stare I knew so well. “You’re out of your fucking mind,” I said, turning back to him. “You want to fire me? Fine, I fucking quit! You want to arrest me for embezzlement? You can kiss the governorship goodbye if I take this public. But coated or not, she belongs to me! I don’t care how connected you are, no judge will ever back you.”
“That is true, Rodrigo. But I do not need a judge to grant me title to your wife,” and here his wolfish grin grew broader. “Isn’t that right, Yvette?”
I looked back at her, amazed that he was batshit enough to actually believe what he was saying, expecting to see shock and outrage on her face. But I didn’t see those things. What I saw was the frozen expression of a teal-colored statue, an ornament that would not look out of place in someone’s garden. “Yvette,” I said, feeling a distinct quaver in my voice as anxiety began coursing through my body like a flash flood, “tell him he’s full of shit!”
She stopped staring at the Tecoma and looked down at the driver’s side windshield wiper, and then up at me. “I’m sorry, Rod,” she said hoarsely. “I-I can’t give this up. I need it.”
“No,” I said, actually vomiting the word out, unable to believe what I was hearing from her. I tried to walk over to her, but found that I was beginning to lose all feeling in my legs, needing the support of my former car to keep me from collapsing completely. “I don’t believe you,” I said, my voice actually shaking now. “He’s making you say this!”
I heard footsteps off to my left, and quickly turned to see my ex-employer’s henchmen coming my way. Don Carlos waved his hand negligently and they stopped in their tracks, which just made me that much angrier. “Do you honestly think a couple of pockmarked cholos are gonna scare me, you fat fucker?” I said acidly. In all truth they did scare me, but I was fast losing my ability to care. My world was crumbling around me; being knifed by a pair of hired vatos seemed like small potatoes.
“Carlos?” It was Yvette’s voice, a calm, carefully modulated tone pitched precisely at a level that would cut through the chaos. But it was hearing her saying his name, without the honorific, that put the knife in my heart. It was at that moment that I realized that none of this was a surprise to her; she had known this was going to happen all along.
“Si, Yvette?”
“I don’t want to say goodbye, not like this. Can you give us a minute, please?”
“Very well,” he said with an air of weary unconcern. “Say your goodbyes.” He opened the door, got in and sat down, making himself comfortable inside that which had only recently been mine.
I felt her hand at my cheek, the backs of her fingers warm against my skin. “I’m sorry, Roddy.”
“It was yesterday, wasn’t it?” My voice sounded hollow, as though someone else were saying the words, and with each passing second I could feel the hollowness spreading, like a cancer that would ultimately consume me. I turned my head and looked into her lens-covered eyes; they were quite dry. “While I was working on Justine. He called you on your phone, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“He told you to meet him.”
“Yes.”
“He said that if you didn’t leave me…what? What did he say to you ‘vette? I want to hear the words.”
“I think you know what he said,” she said solemnly. “He was going to fire you, and blackball you; that you would never work in this state again.”
“And you think I care about that?”
“I know you don’t.”
“Then why?”
“You know why. Must I say it?”
“I won’t believe it if you don’t,” I said, my voice shaking. “You love me.” We looked at each other, and despite the heat of the day I felt cold, numb.
“I love…” she started, and the tears came, but without sniffles or sobs, just a steady stream of water that cascaded over her finish as though she’d been freshly waxed, “…I love…feeling good! I know you can’t understand it, but your polymer…”
“…his polymer!”
“…his polymer…” she paused, apparently trying to find the right words. “You’re right, Roddy, I do love you, but…I want to be beautiful!”
“You are beautiful…”
“Yes, I am, as long as I’m coated. But how long can that last? A month? Two months? I want to be Yumi, Rod! I want to be Doña Clara! I want to be shiny!”
“But I can make you shiny, ‘vette!” I hissed.
“No,” she said with an awful finality, putting her hand gently upon my chest, “you can’t. Only he can.”
I would have looked into her eyes, but I already knew there was nothing to be read there, for her teal contacts obscured her humanity all too well. No, it was her voice that signaled the death knell of our relationship. I had heard it before, in a dream. ‘I must…evolve’, she’d said with calm inevitability, and now here she stood, about to evolve her way out of my life, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Please, Yvette,” I whispered, lacking the strength to speak more forcefully, “please don’t leave me. I can get you help! We can beat this!”
“I don’t want to beat it!” she said tired and exasperated. “You said it yourself, ‘Don Carlos owns 16/2,’ therefore…” and here she spread her arms slightly, a tacit admission of the way of things: Don Carlos owned the polymer that covered her body, inside and out. The polymer that covered her body, inside and out, owned her. The logic was immutable and undeniable: if a=b, and b=c, then Don Carlos did indeed own my bride.
The hollowness inside me was now complete. I felt empty, as though someone had sprayed me down with my own polymer, and then ripped the insides out. I leaned back against the passenger-side door, my legs no longer able to support me. ‘It is not proper to love a slave, Roddy-sama.’ Yumi had told me last night. Had she been trying to warn me of what was to happen? Or had she been trying to get me ready to accept the inevitable? I felt something pressing against my left arm, and looked drunkenly down to see some pieces of paper being held out the window. “Have him sign these, Yvette,” came Don Carlos’s voice from within. “We must go.”
She took the paperwork from him gently, her own fingers trembling, and held them out to me. “You have to…” she started, but then trailed off, apparently unable to say the words. I took them from her, my hands shaking every bit as much as hers. Even though my vision was beginning to blur, I could read the words clearly enough:
DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE-
(DIVORCE) WITHOUT MINOR CHILDREN
In a state of shock I read the document. It was already filled out, with thoughtfully placed x’s indicating where I should sign or initial. I was getting the house and all its furnishings, my truck, my 401k, and all of our savings, which like most Americans is minuscule. Yvette was walking away with nothing more than her car, which surprised me, considering that she would never likely need to drive again. It was all very methodical, every ‘t’ was motherfucking crossed, and every ‘i’ was motherfucking dotted.
“Yvette, I…” I began dazedly.
“Sign it, Rod,” she said, her voice low, sad but resolute.
It was so bizarre, I could hear birds chirping; surprising on such a hot day. I heard a car moving off down the street, its water pump having only a few weeks of life left, judging by the high pitched squealing. I was acutely conscious of my heart beating, and of how dry my throat felt. “I-I…” I rasped, “…need…a…”
A pen was pressed into my hand again. I hadn’t really noticed before, but in my hypersensitive state I could feel the finely machined ridges running down its length, and I could tell by its weight that it was probably titanium – only the finer things in life for Don Carlos. I tried putting the pen to the legal document that would separate me from my ‘vette, but my hands began shaking so badly it was unlikely I would be able to write anything legibly.
“Help him, Yvette,” came Don Carlos’s voice from within his bitchin’ wheels.
She looked as though she wanted to say something but appeared to think better of it. She sighed, then slowly turned around and presented her shiny back to me, giving me a stable surface upon which to write. Feeling as though I were in a dream I signed my name, gently, out of concern for her finish. Two more signatures and three sets of initials, and it was done.
She turned slowly back around, avoiding my eyes it seemed, gently took the papers and pen from me and handed them back into the car. She stood before me, saying nothing, her arms hanging limply down, like a marionette at rest. Seconds that felt like days passed. Hesitantly she put a hand on my chest; I could feel her trembling, vibrating like a car idling at a stoplight. “There…” she began, her voice hoarse, licking her lips despite the damage she was knowingly causing her finish, “there will be other women, Rod, better women…”
“No, ‘vette,” I said, my voice reverberating through the hollow shell that looked like me, “there are no other women. Just you.”
“No,” she said, raising her gaze up to the vicinity of my chin, her voice becoming a little stronger, “I mean…” but at that moment Justine rumbled into life, silencing my former bride. She looked away, biting her lower lip, and though I couldn’t read her face, the set of her shoulders exhibited her anguish quite plainly. I slid aside, slowly, and opened the door for her, that underwater feeling coming over me again, but now I felt as though I were standing on the ocean floor, the incredible pressure about to crush me utterly.
She stood there, unmoving, staring into the open interior of the car, on the verge of merging with it forever because she was too weak to fight her all-consuming addiction. Seconds passed and still she didn’t move, and I wondered, my heart racing even faster, if she actually might beat it. I remembered the scene, not quite two days ago, Yvette sitting at the dining room table, staring at a gallon jug of vinegar that would strip my polymer from her in minutes. ‘I want two things,’ she’d said, ‘and I can’t have both’. She had been ready to fight it then; did she still have the strength? I thought about taking her in my arms, of begging her not to leave me, but Justine’s heavy door was a wall between us, and before I could make my move, she stepped forward and slipped into the passenger seat.
I looked down at her, unable to feel anything, unable to put one thought in front of another. I could barely see her now, so perfectly did she blend into Justine’s interior; they really had become one. I closed her door gently, respectfully; she belonged to someone else now.
“Rodrigo?”
I looked up to see Don Carlos’s hand sticking up over the roof, lazily waving a folded piece of paper at me. Like a sleepwalker I shambled around to the other side of the car, distractedly hoping that he would just put the car in gear and run me over. With shaking fingers I took the check from him. “I took the liberty of subtracting twenty-thousand dollars, for the polymer you stole from me,” he said bitingly.
I thought about responding, but what was there to say? It was over; I had lost. He not only had the better hand, he owned the rest of the cards in the deck, as well. I rubbed Justine's hood lightly, trying to delay the inevitable moment of departure. “Take care of her,” I said weakly.
“Do not worry about that, Rodrigo,” he said running his hand over her steering wheel, “I have made a space for her in the garage, where she will be at home among my other beauties. She will be well-looked after.”
I snorted lightly. Through the slightly dusty windshield I saw her move about slightly. She was staring straight ahead, not really looking at anything, unconsciously squeezing her left tit, the very one that I had caressed the night we first kissed, the night that I had fallen in love with her. It was then that I began to feel something, an overpowering rush of hate and revulsion such as I had never known, and I wanted to hurt her, to make her feel the pain that I was now feeling. “Yeah, Don Carlos,” I drawled, looking into the whites of her eyes, the only really visible part of her. “I know you’ll take good care of her. But it’s like that old saying, you know: ‘You buy a used car, you buy somebody else’s problems’.
She closed her eyes then, and I watched with vengeful satisfaction as iridescent tears rained down her smooth cheeks. Don Carlos looked up at me, a brief flash of anger that quickly melted under my hateful gaze. He tried to put on the old charm again, but I could see all too well beneath the hastily erected mask – he was ashamed. “Adios,” he mumbled, and put the car in gear and let her roll backwards. He backed out into the street, turned, and smoothly pulled away, taking with him all the happiness I had ever known.
I turned my back on my ex-employer’s hired thugs, as well as a few of my curious neighbors who were probably wondering what the fuck was going on, and walked on numb legs into the garage. Her car was already gone, as was her unfinished antique dresser. The workbenches were cleared of anything and everything that had to do with LP_16/2. There was only the lingering smell of latex and the scent of her coconut oil moisturizer. And that was when it came, the shock and the anger subsiding only enough to let the grief burst through, which it did with the force of dam breaking. My legs buckled and I dropped to my hands and knees, and began sobbing uncontrollably, my tears puddling on the concrete like coolant from a busted radiator.
To Be Continued…
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