Chapter Four

Jim should have jumped into the pool and stayed underwater when Rory stepped out of the house in her robe. He’d heard the French doors slide open, and the hair on his arms bristled. He kept his head down, concentrating on the glowing amber of his cigarette, so he didn’t have to watch her approach. Within his board shorts, his c**k twitched. He told himself to jump in the pool; that’d shrink him real quick. But of course, the pool was heated because Sam, who drew up the plans for the house, designed every aspect with comfort and luxury in mind.

And then Rory stood over him, seducing him with her cinnamon and night jasmine scent. Jim tried not to breathe too deeply, or he’d get intoxicated on her heady fragrance. Rory was his new drug these days. He craved her like a meth-head desperate for his next fix. She asked him about his ankle monitor, and he almost didn’t hear her because she sounded as though she were speaking through a tin can on the other end of a long string. He told her the sucker was water-resistant, and he could probably deep dive with it.

“Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous with all that hovering,” he told her, trying to sound irritable. He drew hard on his cigarette and blew the smoke away from her. In the moonlight, her skin had a pearlescence that mesmerized him and compelled him to stroke her face. 

She bit down on her lower lip and looked down at her bare feet, which were an arm’s reach away from him. After a moment, she pulled up a chaise longue close to the pool so she could sit on it and her robe wouldn’t get wet. “You’re looking pretty pensive, Mr. Kelly. What’s in your head?”

Jim shrugged. “Lots of things, nothing at all.”

She slid him a sidelong glance. “Sam says you’re the philosopher of the family, the one with the soul of a poet. I bet your mind is busy all the time.”

Oh, like she wouldn’t believe. “Let’s just say I could probably get some mileage out of that Mindfulness podcast you listen to every morning.”

She reached over and poked the side of his nose, which caught him off guard for a beat. “You know about that, huh?” She chuckled. “Well, what’s your most pressing concern at the moment?”

Heh-heh. Pressing concern. How about the erection pressing against his thigh right now? 

Well, time to talk about something really boring.

“I was listening to this guy on Fresh Air after dinner. Terry Gross interviewed an epidemiologist who used to work for the WHO and became one of the medical advisors in the Obama administration. He’s originally from India, went to Oxford Medical School, a Rhodes and Fulbright scholar, and is at the forefront of virus and epidemic research. Smart dude. Anyway, he told Terry this Coronavirus thing will be bigger than the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed 675,000 people in the U.S. alone. Our country now has over three times the population from a hundred years ago, which was one hundred and three million. Our cities and towns are much more packed with people now. Dr. Varne said by the end of 2020, we could have 300,000 dead and one out of fifty people infected. This is not just some doom and gloom guy, Aurora. He knows what he’s talking about. Anyway, the current administration just fired him.” He had to take a deep breath after he got all that out. He babbled because he was afraid of what might happen if things got awkward and silent.

“Yikes,” Rory replied, her dark eyes wide and worried. “Sam talked about it a little before bed, but I stopped him because I didn’t want to get nightmares.”

Jim clamped his upper lip between his teeth and shook his head. He was an i***t. Rory was sunshine and flowers. Her name “Aurora” literally meant “dawn,” for God’s sake. “Sorry. I didn’t use to care about this stuff, you know? But back when I was going through my tortured-artist, existential-crisis phase, I had bigger things to worry about. Like, how in the grand scheme of things, I’m just a drop of water in the ocean or a pappus floating in the wind, and no one would really remember who I was fifty years from now, no matter how many mediocre songs I write. I was such a self-centered douchebag.”

Rory wrinkled her nose. “What’s a pappus?”

Jim stared at her in disbelief. Did she not hear anything else he said after that? “It’s… the dandelion seed thing that flies away when you pick up a dandelion and blow on it.”

“Oh.” Rory stretched her bottom lip with a grimace. “It has an actual name, huh? I thought it was just called dandelion fluff. I never really consider the nomenclature of things. I should work on that.” She scratched her chin. “Anyway, I went through a phase like that. I don’t know if you know this, but when Sam was in med school, he and I briefly broke up for a few months, and… well, something happened to me I haven’t been able to talk about since then, not even to Sam. I just can’t…” Her voice broke, and her hand went up to cover her mouth.

“Whoa.” Alarmed, Jim shifted his body toward her and cupped her bare knee, unveiled by the parting of the robe she had on. The dark pink silk nightie she wore stopped mid-thigh. He swallowed hard and tried to remember the parameters of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, so he wouldn’t wonder if his distressed sister-in-law was wearing panties. “Are you okay, Rory? I know you said you don’t want to talk about it, but if you ever need someone… I’m, well, I’m here. My range is kind of limited these days.”

She made a squeaky noise that sounded like a sob, so Jim hoped to heaven she wasn’t crying. He didn’t know what he would do with a crying Rory. In the past, he’d kissed and distracted the crying women in his life with s*x until they were no longer upset with him, but that only worked for girlfriends. He couldn’t exactly do that with his sister-in-law.

A snort, then a giggle spilled forth. Jim squinted at her, studying her with suspicion. Was she just messing with him? “Hey.” He shook her knee, then pried his hand off. “Are you okay?”

When she looked up, he saw her slightly swollen nose, wet eyelashes, and the streaks on her cheeks. She had been crying, but somehow, he made her laugh, too. She smacked him on the shoulder. “Ugh, you’re awful. And you’re such a sweetheart. I’m so thankful for your presence, Jim. It just feels good to have another person in the house.”

He took one last drag from his cigarette, inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs, and held it for a few beats. Turning his head away from Rory, he released it through his nostrils. Oh, super, he was about as useful to her as a cocker spaniel. He extinguished the cigarette in the water, then deposited the stub into his empty can of ginger ale. 

“It wasn’t fair of Sunny to treat you that way, especially in front of a guest,” Rory said with a sigh. “She could have been civil, at least.” 

Jim shrugged and pretended like his baby sister’s snub didn’t bother him at all. “She did her best. By not talking to me, she remained civil. It’s not a big deal, Rory. I messed up, and I’m working my way to fixing things. Hopefully, someday, we can mend our fences, but I hurt her a lot, Rory. I let her down. She looked up to me. I let Sam down, too. These things take time, you know, and I just need to give people space.”

“Oh, Jim.” She touched his shoulder and then pulled her hand back as quickly as a snake in a reverse strike. “Sweetie, I think we let you down, too. You’re such a forceful personality, Jim, that Sam thought you were handling yourself just fine for a while. You never came to any of us for help. I should have paid more attention to your songs, maybe. Your last album—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m just babbling. I’m exhausted.”

Her touch, however brief it was, felt like a balm to the ache in his soul. Her hand was soft and cool against his heated skin. He ached for more of it, like a man yearning for more water in the middle of a desert after receiving a few drops on his tongue. 

She was right. His last album was a confessional of sorts, and now that he looked back on it, probably his swan song. The critics called it his most matured, sophisticated work; some said it should have launched his solo career because he’d been carrying the band for years, anyway. Though as critically and commercially successful as it was, that last album finally broke the group up. The infighting got out of hand. Their drummer OD’d on heroin, so his widow blamed and sued them. Several women came out and accused his bass guitarist Leon of s****l assault, so the band’s manager Tony spent most of the money from the album and concert sales paying them off. At the end of a ten-year career, he had nothing but some worthless awards and a little over a million dollars. To assuage his guilt about Leon, he donated half of it to a foundation that funded rape treatment centers and women’s counseling. He deposited a sizeable chunk of it into Sunny’s bank account so she could pay for college and now law school. 

After stints in rehab and legal costs, he barely had two pennies to rub together. He convinced himself that was okay because he got into trouble when he had too much money in his hands. Now whatever income he received, he immediately got rid of. He supported his bandmates and their families these days with the royalties he received from his songs and residuals from old TV performances. He knew Rory disapproved because she thought he ought to save money for himself, but he’d just shrug and tell her money was the root of all evil. That usually got a laugh out of her.

This was a bad idea, having her so close to him on such a rough night. Her fragrance replaced the stench of cigarette smoke and made his mouth water. “You should get to bed, then. I’m going to stay up for a bit, maybe take a swim. Burn up this excess energy I have.”

He thought she might have checked him out at that moment, as a woman would a man she finds attractive. Her eyes tracked a line from the waistband of his board shorts, slowly up his chest, then stopped at his mouth. Unlike his brother, he had hair on his chest that thinned and tapered down to his crotch. Not Richard Burton-hairy, but enough for decoration. He wondered what she thought of it. She clamped her bottom lip between her teeth for a hot second, released a long sigh, as though she too were blowing out smoke. “I don’t know. Maybe I ought to stay and watch you just in case you drown or something. It’d be tough to sell the house later on if someone died in it.”

He laughed and met her dark gaze, which twinkled with mirth. Did he just imagine her checking him out? He must have. “I think that’s only for violent deaths. Hey, you could use my death as a marketing gimmick. Former rock star Seamus Kelly drowned in your pool, so now he haunts your backyard or something. You could invite ghost hunters, like those assholes who won’t stop bothering River Phoenix at the Viper Room. The dude has been dead for almost thirty years. Let him rest.”

“Oh my God, you are so bad.” She hit his upper arm again. “Well, I’m gonna go in, then. Your brother might wake up and wonder where I am. Don’t stay up too late, and don’t you dare drown.” She stood, placed her hand on his shoulder, and scooped down to press a kiss on his forehead. “Good night, Seamus.” 

She mussed his hair like he was a little boy, then walked back into the house. No, “sashayed” was the more accurate word. Rory swayed like she had a tune in her head only she could hear and synchronized her movements to it. It wasn’t an affectation. She just naturally shifted her limbs as though at any moment, she could break out in a spontaneous dance number like Jennifer Beales from Flashdance. He watched until she re-entered the house and noticed that she left the sliding door in the den open for him.

He savored the sensation of having the pillowy softness of her lips, pressing on his skin. He hadn’t been expecting the action, so he froze in place. His eyes went directly to her breasts because when she leaned over him, the neckline of the nightie slackened, and he got an eyeful of her round, apple-sized t**s, tipped with small, dusky n*****s.

Oh, God, like he needed another contribution to his spank bank. Now he had the mental image of his sister-in-law’s perfect breasts. He rubbed himself through his board shorts. Was he going to be in a state of permanent arousal around Rory?

He tipped his head back and groaned. He felt like howling at the moon.

He reminded himself of the sorrow that lurked in Rory’s eyes when she haltingly told him about an incident that happened to her while she and Sam were on the outs. Why didn’t he know about that? He would have swooped in!

She still couldn’t talk about it, she said. It had to have been something traumatizing because it still haunted her many years later. Sam didn’t even know about it.

If he could stop thinking with his c**k for a minute, he believed he could help her. People have told him he was a good listener and felt good after talking things out with him. He could be Rory’s sounding board. He wanted to be something for her that Sam wasn’t.

In the meantime, he had to get rid of this unbearable heat building up in his core, the primal part of him that was compelling him to barge into Sam’s bedroom, kill his own brother, and take his wife. It was the craziest thought he’d ever had. It was some Cain and Abel shit. 

He rose to his feet, dropped his shorts to the ground, and dove into the pool. He stayed under for as long as he could, hugging his knees to his chest. He only surfaced when his lungs began to burn. His first gulp of air was ecstasy.

He got into freediving after a trip to Costa Rica with his ex-girlfriend Ashley, and they stayed in a villa in Guanacaste for almost a month. Every day, he went underwater for three to five minutes at a time without scuba gear. Ashley has screamed at him about it, accusing him of having a death wish.

But she didn’t understand. Whenever he held his breath underwater, a minute could feel like forever, and in that minute, he could choose to panic about his lack of air or focus on maintaining his equilibrium and appreciate the beauty of the world around him. The minute passed, then another and another. He stayed under until the limits of his physical body compelled him to seek the surface for a gulp of life-affirming air.

But in those three to five minutes, he found eternity.