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Last Gasp

J.T. Siemens

    The rhododendron shrubs parted and Henry stepped into the garden. “Come here often?” he said.
    Ruby jumped and stared at him with her giant horror-film eyes. “It’s three in the morning. How did you know I was here?”
    “I could smell your cigarette from my apartment,” he said, taking the smoke from her hand.
    “Yeah well, you smell like sex.”
    No good way to respond to that, Henry thought, affecting nonchalance by taking a drag of the cigarette and blowing smoke at the sickle moon hanging low over the Stanley Park treetops. The stillness was disquieting, like the forest was holding its breath.
    Ruby took back her cigarette. “It’s good you guys are back together.”
    “We’re not.”
    “She’s upstairs, isn’t she?”
    “Yes.”
    She gestured toward the nearby high-rise, all the windows dark. “She could be listening to us right now.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “I do. Listen, Henry, I never meant to let it get this far.”
    “No one ever does. Yet here we are.”
    “I can’t—”
    From the apartment building came the shocked shout of a man, disturbing, almost like an animal in distress.
    They looked up at the building. A room was now lit up on the eighth floor. Henry’s face twisted in confusion as he recognized it as his bedroom. It had only been a few minutes since he’d left Luz alone.
    “Oh, shit,” Ruby said. “It’s—”

*

    Ruby felt like a sweaty slob as she wiped muffin crumbs off tables and collected coffee mugs. The afternoon rush at Delano’s had receded like a sudden tide, leaving behind the usual debris of scattered newspapers, spilled coffee, and croissant flakes. Someone’s baby had puked on the floor near the back tables and there had been a half-assed attempt at cleaning it up.
    She went for a mop, her mind on yesterday’s audition. Crap role in a forgettable Netflix sitcom, but decent exposure if she got it. Next level shit. Then she’d be able to put the kibosh on this job. The manager had been on the rag about her taking time off for casting calls anyway. She shoved the mop beneath the table, pushing the milky chunks further back toward the wall. Out of sight. Fuck it.
    “People are pigs,” he said.
    Ruby looked up, eyes colliding with the guy who’d been watching her all afternoon. He was older, but in a good way: flecks of silver at the temples, laugh lines at the corners of his green eyes. Mac open in front of him, cup of coffee, black, at his side. A crisp white T accentuated his tanned biceps.
    “Oink, oink,” she said. Instantly baffled by her own reply, she scrunched up her face.
    His laugh lines deepened as he smiled. “I’m Henry.”
    “Ruby,” she said. “You’ve been watching me.”
    He nodded. “Guilty. Do you get off soon?”
    “You don’t mess around.”
    “It’s just that you look tired. Like you can’t wait to get out of here.”
    She considered slapping the baby-barf mop against the side of his face.
    As though reading her thoughts, he smiled and sipped his coffee. Smug bastard.
    “I should tell you,” she said, “that I’ve got a big, jealous boyfriend who is deeply in love with me.”
    “No doubt,” he said, “though it sounds one sided.”
    “You do realize you’ve got a tan line from your wedding ring, right?”
    “Newly divorced and a recent arrival to the area. I live just near here.”
    Ruby leaned on the mop handle and stared at him until she saw him shift uncomfortably in his seat. “I get off in forty-five minutes. That gives you just enough time.”
    “To do what?”
    “To get your swim trunks.”

*

    Henry felt something brush his foot underwater. “Are there sharks out here?” he called out. Never much of a swimmer, he was having a tough time keeping up with Ruby, who kept paddling further and further into the waters of English Bay. The moment they passed the buoys the wind and chop picked up.
    “Sharks like warm water,” she called back, “but you never know.”
    When he looked up again, Ruby was treading water and facing him. She squinted in the sun and stuck out her tongue. God, she looked young. Half his age, if that. Strawberry-blonde hair slicked back and eyes big and blue enough to sink a man.
    “You scared, Henry?”
    “Hell, no.”
    “You wanna turn back?”
    “Nope. I took swimming lessons when I was six, so I’m good to go.”
    “I swam on the national team until I was fifteen.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “In less than a year I went from 32-B to 36-D. Improved my buoyancy, but made me slow as fuck. Still faster than you, though. C’mon, Henry—catch me!”
    He grinned and paddled furiously toward her. When he got there, she was gone. He turned in a circle. She was nowhere, like she had never existed. Ten seconds went by, twenty, thirty . . . He called out, feeling light-headed. After a full minute passed, he thought, holy shit, she drowned. Will they think I killed her? Who even knows I’m here? Maybe I’ll just paddle back like it never happened.
    “RUBY!” he screamed.
    A sharp tug on his ankle pulled his head partly underwater. As he flailed and spluttered, his shorts were yanked down around his knees. Ruby’s head popped above the surface like a seal.
    “Miss me?”
    “What the fuck, Ruby?”
    Ruby laughed and kissed him. She wrapped her arms and legs around his body, making him struggle to stay afloat. He kissed her back. “What would your big, jealous boyfriend say about this?”
    “Do you care?”
    “Not in the slightest.”
    “Then take a deep breath.”
    Henry took a big gulp of air, just before Ruby locked her salty lips around his and pulled him under.

*

    With each contraction of his eighteen-inch biceps, Filipe imagined the garden-hose sized vein springing a leak and painting the rest of the gym-goers crimson. People screaming like little bitches. Fainting, dropping weights, splitting their own stupid heads open. He slammed the dumbbells on the rack, grabbed some lighter ones, and kept cranking reps.
    Why did he have thoughts like that? Ever since the surgery, his head hadn’t been right. He wondered if the cancer had spread to his brain. He had mentioned it to Ruby once, and she suggested maybe it was the testosterone therapy. He was afraid of talking to a doctor about it. A blood test would reveal that he’d been taking triple the prescribed dose for the past six months, to the point where he’d had to find a steroid dealer to score the extra juice he craved.
    In the mirror he watched Ruby’s red Lycra encased ass across the gym as she did squats. She racked the bar and turned around, looking over at him and smiling in that way that made him weak in the gut. He felt a stirring in his sweats and was happy that for once blood was surging where it was meant to.
    In the mirror some skinny douche approached Ruby and started chatting her up as she stretched her hamstrings. She smiled politely and said something that made douche laugh before he walked away. Ruby looked over and rolled her eyes. Filipe clenched his jaw into something resembling a smile.
    As he walked toward the water fountain, a distinct thuck sound came from his groin. It often happened during workouts when his pumped up quads compressed his saline testicle implants, which temporarily adhered to each other. When they released suction: Thuck! The douche that had been hitting on Ruby looked up from the pec flye machine. Actually glanced at Filipe’s groin as he walked past. Filipe glowered back. Yeah, just fucking try me.
    Douche looked away. Coward.
    Filipe felt like an idiot. It never used to be this way, these mood swings. He didn’t know himself anymore. Felt like he was going insane. His worst fear was that Ruby would leave him and he’d end the same way as his mother, locked up in a psych ward. As he drank from the fountain, he let the stream hit him full in the face, douse his eyes to mask the tears.
    Soon as he got home he would pop an Ativan, take a chill pill, as his mother used to say when he was a kid.
    As they left the gym together, Ruby leaned over and kissed him, asked if he was working late that night.
    “Yes,” he lied. “Why?”
    She shrugged. “I’ll probably hang with Tamara again.”
    He nodded. “Another girl’s night?”
    “I guess.”
    “What do you guys talk about?”
    “You. We discuss you the whole night.”
    He studied her poker face. After a moment, she burst out laughing.
    “You are a serious dingus,” she said.
    As they stepped onto the bustle of Denman Street, Ruby stopped by some street kids outside Tim Horton’s. She bent to scratch their mutt behind the ears. He frowned when she dropped a fiver into their open guitar case, even though the lazy shits had been out here all summer and he’d yet to see them play an instrument. It bugged him that she was so cavalier with money. He was also acutely aware that although she was ten years his junior, she made far more off acting gigs than he. Ergo, if Ruby wanted to throw money at every band of hobos she saw, it was her prerogative. Still bugged him.
    He needed to get cast in something, boost his confidence back. He couldn’t bring himself to reveal how he’d stuttered during the deodorant commercial audition. He felt the tears return and quickly slipped on his sunglasses. Last year a shrink had diagnosed him with a case of PTSD, brought on by the catastrophic news that in order to survive, he would have to become a eunuch. But now Filipe worried that the shrink’s assessment was inaccurate, that it was something that ran deeper, an inherent and incurable flaw.
    Walking past the 7-11, they hung a right on Comox. He caught Ruby eyeing him sympathetically. A downward flick of her eyes told him it was the way he was walking, unconsciously bow-legged to avoid the suction effect.
    “You should let the doctor know, Philly,” she said. “Maybe there’s something they can do.”

*

    “Am I your little slut, daddy?”
    “Oh, yeah, baby. You’re my little slut.”
    “C’mon, Henry, drum up some enthusiasm.”
    “I thought that’s what I was doing.”
    “Does it weird you out when I call you that?”
    “Just a little.”
    “Why do you think I like to call you daddy?”
    “Because technically I’m old enough to be your father and you have daddy issues?”
    “Both those statements are true, but that’s not it.”
    “No?”
    “No. And don’t make that face, Sigmund. I don’t want to fuck my father. That’s gross.”
    “Good to know.”
    “I call you daaaaddddy, because you’re the big, powerful man and I like you being in control. Understand?”
    “Abundantly.”
    “Good, now flip me over, pin me down, and pound me! Urk. Ohhh, yeah, that’s it, daddy! Fuck your dirty little slut! Yeah, spank me harder. Harder! Ohmigod, I don’t know if I can take itÉwhy are you stopping?”
    “I think my downstairs neighbors are banging on the ceiling. It’s three in the morning.”
    “Does that mean it’s time for me to go home?”
    “You’re not going anywhere, you dirty little slut.”
    “Oh, daaaaddddyÉ”

        AN hour later, Ruby sat naked on Henry’s kitchen counter, tossing grapes in the air and catching them in her mouth. She tossed one to Henry, sitting in his boxers on the opposite counter. The grape ricocheted off his nose and fell to the floor.
    Ruby laughed. The melodious sound carried through the open window to her left and down to the alley behind the building, where Filipe stood in the shadows. From the angle, he could only see the top of Ruby’s head through the window. He counted upward with his finger. Eighth floor. Right corner. He heard her laugh again, then turned and stalked down the alley, rage inflating his flattened heart.

*

    “WHAT does he think when you come home at dawn?”
    “Girl’s sleepover.”
    “It’s the third time this week.”
    “We’re actors. We don’t abide by the conventions of normal society.”
    “So he’s fucking around too, then?”
    “Highly doubtful.”
    “Do you love him?”
    She paused. “Yes.”
    “But . . .”
    “He has to understand that a woman my age has needs.”
    “Why isn’t he attending to said needs?”
    “He found a lump on his testicle last year.”
    “Oh. Was it bad?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did they catch it in time?”
    “No. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
    “Okay.”
    “Just hold me.”
    “Sure. Uh—you can’t smoke in here.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Yeah. Fire hazard, I guess. Plus, it stinks.”
    “Well, I need a smoke. Let’s go outside.”

*

    Filipe smelled the cigarettes on Ruby when she climbed into bed and snuggled up to him. Sunlight slashed in through a crack in the blinds. He had been up for hours, watching shadows play on the walls.
    “How was the movie?” he asked.
    “We binged watched The Americans,” she said. “You know, the one set in the 80s, about the KGB spies living in the States?”
    “The one where they’re living double lives?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Is it good?”
    “Pretty intense, yeah.”
    “I’ll have to check it out sometime.”
    She kissed his neck. “We could watch it together.”
    “You’ve seen it already.”
    She nibbled his earlobe. “I’d see it again.”
    He touched himself. Limp. Dead dick. He thought of reverse head-butting her in the face, see what kind of roles she’d land with a pancaked nose. The thought made him ill.
    She reached around to work him.
    Nothing.
    Squeezing his eyes shut, he conjured the image of drilling her like the old days, with the ass slapping and hair pulling.
    The choking.
     Ruby was a gasper, and it had been a long time since his hands had circled her throat. He envisioned it now, her eyes bulging as he tightened his grip.
    “It’s okay, Philly,” she cooed, releasing his flaccid member and going to work on his shoulders. “You just need to relax. You’re so tense. Relax, baby, breathe, in and out. That’s it.”
    It felt good to melt into her embrace. Before he knew it Ruby was snoring and he felt himself sinking back into sleep, to a place where he was still whole.
    The blaring alarm jolted him awake. She snored through it. He lifted the sheets and rolled out of bed. When he found himself at half-mast, he nearly woke her. Then he saw the hand-shaped bruise on her exposed ass. He extended his hand over the print to see if it was a match. The other hand had been distinctly bigger.
    Filipe wilted. He stood watching Ruby for a long time. Then he picked up a pillow, gripping an end in each hand. If she liked choking . . .
    Ruby mumbled something and rolled over to his side of the bed, not caring that he was no longer there.
    He blinked a few times and dropped the pillow back. He pulled on his shorts and walked out of the bedroom.
    Thuck.

*

    Clink.
    The chime from their bumping wine glasses hung in the air between them for several seconds. Henry and Ruby held each other’s eyes over the flicker of the candle. It was one of those simple and ethereal moments he would remember for the rest of his life.
    “Salute,” he said, sipping the soda water in the glass.
    “What are we cheersing to?” Ruby said, sipping her wine.
    “My ex.”
    “Is she paying for this?”
    “No, but if she hadn’t dumped my ass, I’d never have met you.”
    “We ought to call her up and thank her.”
    “Now there’s an idea.”
    “You know, when I creeped her on Facebook, I couldn’t help but notice she looks a lot like me.”
    “No she doesn’t. Wait, you creeped Luz on Facebook?”
    “Don’t act so surprised. Everybody does it. And yes, she does look like me. Or, I look like her. Probably why you were so enamored with me in Delano’s that day. I reminded you of your ex.”
    “Nonsense.”
    Ruby pulled up Facebook on her phone. The waiter arrived to take their order and she showed him the screen. “Settle a bet for us. Do you think she looks like me?”
    “Oh, Christ,” Henry said.
    “Pretty close,” the waiter said. “Only older. Your mother?”
    Ruby’s laugh turned heads in the busy restaurant. “His wife.”
    “Ex-wife,” Henry said. His neck felt hot. For the first time in over a month he thought about a drink.
    After the waiter took their orders and walked away, Ruby arched a brow. “Told ya. What’s Luz like in the sack?”
    “I am not going there. No way.”
    She scrolled through more photos on her phone. “It’s crazy how much we look alike. Strawberry blonde hair, pale skin, big tits.”
    “Okay, enough.”
    “Tell me one thing that’s different about her.”
    “She has a tattoo on her ankle. You don’t have any.”
    “What’s her tattoo?”
    “Darwin’s fish. The one with the legs.”
    “She’s an atheist?”
    “Of the obnoxiously militant variety.”
    “And you?”
    He rearranged his cutlery. “I believe there’s something behind all this. I just don’t know what it is.”
     “I don’t know what this is either. I just know we shouldn’t be doing it.”
    Henry touched the back of her hand. “Feeling guilty?”
    She turned her hand palm up against his, playing her fingers on the inside of his wrist. “It’s happening so fast.”
    “I don’t want to create problems for you.”
    “You’re such a liar.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then break it off.”
    “I can’t. I have an addictive personality. You break it off.”
    Her rapturous eyes looked up at him. “I don’t want to. I also don’t want to hurt him. This would hurt him. The sex is one thing —I mean, Filipe and I—since the surgery . . .”
    “I understand.”
    “No, you don’t. What I’m trying to say is this is different. It feels sneakier than sex.”
    “Because it’s romantic.”
    “Yes. I need more wine. Is it okay if I drink around you?”
    “It’s fine. I like the taste of wine on your breath when I kiss you.”
    “What if when I kissed you, I spat some into your mouth; would that break your sobriety?”
    “Depends if I swallow I guess.”
    “Would you relapse because of me?”
    “You’d be as good a reason as any.”
    “You’re a different breed of cat, Henry. You know that?”
    He smiled. “That’s why you love me.”
    “I do not love you.”
    “If you subtract the ‘do not’ part, you just said it.” He got the waiter’s attention and pointed toward her empty glass.

*

    “Choke me, daddy!”
    Henry paused mid-thrust. “What?”
    Ruby grabbed one of his wrists and placed his hand over her throat. “Squeeze,” she instructed.
    “How hard?”
    “Don’t tell me you’ve never choked anyone before. You’re a forty-four year old man. That’s straight-up embarrassing.”
    “I’ve lived a very sheltered life.”
    “Apparently. Now, fucking choke me. Not continuously, but when I’m about to come, choke me harder, till my eyes go a little buggy. It’s dope.”
    “What if I go too hard?”
    “I’ll let you know.”

        THE sweat was still drying on their skin as Ruby and Henry looked up at the stars from a blanket on the grass. They were back in the rhododendron garden, sharing a cigarette. It was Henry’s first smoke. First time choking someone during climax, too. He’d found it immensely gratifying. So much so that he had experienced a simultaneous orgasm. He felt drugged.
    “Told you it was dope,” Ruby said.
    “Did you and Filipe used to do this stuff?”
    She sighed and snuggled her head into his chest. “You really want to know?”
    “Now that you mention it, I don’t.”
    “Does it bother you that I go home to him?”
    “I don’t think about it.”
    “You’re so full of shit, man.”
    He let that go. Several heavy moments of silence passed and her breath came slow and moist against his chest and he thought maybe she had fallen asleep.
    “Let’s go someplace,” he said.
    “We’re already someplace.”
    “I was thinking somewhere a little further.”
    “Okay. Where?”
    “Costa Rica.”
    “That would be nice.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “I know you are.” She pushed herself up and looked down at him. The moonlight reflected off the red highlights in her hair. “I should go.”
    “Don’t go. Stay.”
    “I can’t. This is all kind of fucking with my head.”
    “Because you like me.”
    She smacked his chest. “Yes, you dingus. And Filipe—he’s been acting strange lately. It’s not fair to do this to him.”
    “It’s not fair to stay with him if you’re unhappy.”
    “I can’t leave him.”
    “So you’d rather stay in a unsatisfying relationship?”
    She stood. “It’s complicated.”
    “I don’t really think it is.”
    “You think I should just leave Filipe, like your wife left you?”
    “Maybe I’ll ask her about it. I’m actually having dinner with her tomorrow.”
    She paused. “Did my older doppelg'nger ask you for dinner?”
    “Matter of fact, she did.”
    Ruby gathered up her bag and slipped on her sandals. “Really hope that works out for you, bud.”
    Henry propped himself on his elbow and smiled as he watched the angry flex of Ruby’s departing buttocks beneath her yellow dress. The lingering smell of her cigarette hung in the air. He lay back and drank it up.

*

    “You’re looking good, Hank,” Luz said.
    “You too, Luz.”
    They sat on the patio of Hook, where Denman met bustling Beach Avenue. Henry chose the spot for maximum exposure. It was less than two blocks from Ruby’s apartment.
    “I’m serious,” Luz said, sipping her G&T. “You look younger. Refreshed. Are you seeing anyone?”
    Henry tried to hide his smile. Failed.
    Luz nudged him beneath the table and gave him a wicked look. By God, she did look like Ruby. Sharper nose and brown eyes, but other than that, the resemblance was spooky.
    “You are!” Luz said. “Admit it.”
    He shrugged. Luz wore a form-fitting red dress with a sequin design accentuating her voluminous breasts. It looked new and expensive. It gave him the idea to take Ruby shopping.
    “C’mon, Hank,” Luz prodded, “who is she? Spill.”
    “We’re at a very early stage. I don’t want to jinx anything.”
    “You seem evasive. Is she someone I know?”
    “Not a chance.”
    “She’s a stripper, isn’t she? I know you had a fondness for the Number 5—”
    “I don’t go there anymore, Luz.”
    “Well, that’s good. Staying sober?”
    He looked at her sweating drink. “One day at a time.”
    “I was seeing someone,” she said, “but it was one of those rebound things. Doomed to fail.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Luz looked at him. She was a beautiful woman, but her eyes were hard, even when she smiled.
    “I’m not,” she said. “You know, I never did get to see your place. You live next to the park, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Nice quiet place to do your writing. Maybe after dinner we can check it out.”
    The sun was setting, a radioactive pink ball melting into the Pacific. All around, people had their phones out to photograph it, Luz among them. After capturing the sunset, she pointed the phone at him. “Smile, Henry.”
    Henry thought of Ruby and felt his lips curl upward.
    Luz lowered the phone. “You look happy,” she said. “I wish you could have looked that way when we were together.”

        FILIPE pretended to be asleep as Ruby climbed out of bed. He listened silently as she pulled on clothes and left the room. He heard her grab keys off the kitchen counter. The door opened and closed.
    He got out of bed and quickly dressed in a dark tracksuit.
    Through a crack in the blinds of the bedroom window he watched Ruby light a cigarette as she walked up the alley toward the park.

        HENRY snapped awake, feeling discombobulated and somehow drunk. The bedside clock read 2:52. Moonlight through the window splashed across Luz’s naked body beside him. He cursed inwardly. The sex hadn’t even been that good. After giving her a minor-league demonstration of Rough-Henry, she had called him an animal, but advised him to ease back the throttle. Slow and sensual, like we used to do.
    Climbing out of bed, he pulled on his boxers and T-shirt. Walking into the living room, he anticipated the awkwardness of the following morning. Best-case scenario, Luz would realize her mistake and beat a hasty retreat. Worst-case: she’d seek to rekindle what was for him already dead and buried.
    He stepped out onto the balcony. From here he could look down onto the Rhododendron Garden and the park beyond. He smelled cigarette smoke, and spotted a glowing ember through the bushes.
    Henry smiled. Ruby was spying on him. It meant she cared. It meant she loved him.
    Creeping out of the apartment, he left the door ajar and took the stairs down. As he opened the building’s side door, he realized he’d forgotten his keys upstairs. Not relishing the thought of climbing eight flights back up to get them, he found a decent sized rock and wedged it between the door and the frame.
    Then he walked barefoot around the building and down the wood-chipped path, guided by the scent of rhododendrons and cigarettes.

        FILIPE approached the rear of the building. Dead silence surrounded him and the alley was stark and brightly lit. The eighth floor window was dark. It was late, but he aimed to wait near the bushes by the lobby. Someone would eventually come out and he’d waltz inside. Being an older structure, it was unlikely he’d encounter a fob situation at the elevator. Once on the eighth floor he would wake them with a polite knock on the door. Or perhaps he would wait patiently outside the apartment door, witness the shock in Ruby’s eyes when she left to come home. Tonight he was in the hands of destiny, guided by forces outside his control. He couldn’t recall a time he had felt so free.
    A sound made him duck behind a dumpster. He watched a barefoot, middle-aged dude emerge from a side door. The man propped the door open with a rock, before walking away toward the park, a little bounce in his step. Probably a homo cruising for a late night piece of ass in the trails.
    Filipe moved toward the door.

        LUZ tossed in her sleep, dreaming about being trapped in a burning car as she struggled to get free. She couldn’t move. Henry had been in the driver’s seat, but now he was gone. He had left her alone to burn.
    She couldn’t hear any flames, only a strange metronomic ticking every few seconds. No, not really a ticking. More like the sound you get when you pull a suction cup from the side of the fridge.
    Thuck.
    Thuck.
    First she felt his weight on her. Then came the hands around her throat. Luz smiled, realizing then that she’d been dreaming. She was in Henry’s bed and he was playing a game. He had grown a kinky streak. As she opened her mouth, he squeezed so hard she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Her eyes popped open to see a hulking shadow over her, the whites of his eyes skittering in the gloom. Luz thrashed and fought, but he had her arms pinned down by his knees. The last thing Luz felt before her lights permanently went out was his hard cock between her breasts.

*

    “IT’S good you guys are back together,” Ruby said.
    “We’re not.”
    “She’s upstairs, isn’t she?”
    “Yes.”
    “She could be listening to us right now.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “I do. Listen, Henry, I never meant to let it get this far.”
    “No one ever does. Yet here we are.”
    “I can’t—”
    From the apartment building came the shocked shout. They looked up, saw that the light was on.
    “Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s Filipe.”
    The shout came again. “Nooooooooooooooo.”
    Henry made a move for the building, but Ruby stopped him and shook her head. She stared into his eyes and for a long moment, neither of them said anything. Finally she sat cross-legged on the grass, pulled him down beside her. “We’re safe here,” she whispered. “Let’s just wait for the show to start.”

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