A violent rush of snowy wind tore the branches away from the front windows, the sound loud and crackling, disruptive enough to pull Todd away from Tea. He sauntered to the door and pulled it open partway, checking for damage, turning his head slightly at the iciness. Closed it once again, locking the locks ... he eyed his former wife who had retreated into the depths of one of the armchairs in the room. She'd pulled up her knees ... her legs, folding them beneath her, her arms wrapped around herself. The fire held her expressionless attention.
"Still cold?" Todd's voice took on a kind of husky quality, stirring pictures of early morning pillow talk, coffee spilled on mussed blankets, soft chuckles in a darkened, airy California bungalow. Tea swallowed hard, the lump in her throat a harsh reminder of how far she'd come since those days. How far her lover had gone.
Get under the covers, mijo, it's freezing. I thought the Golden State wasn't supposed to be cold. It's not supposed to be ... come, warm me up. Yeah, yeah ... let me at you, Tea ...
"Nothing can warm me up in your house, Todd."
"Mmm. I'm sorry for that."
He strolled over to her, stood tall, staring downwards. Tea wouldn't leave the flames, couldn't bring herself to look directly at him. She flinched when she felt his fingertips running along the side of her face, like stones picked from a mountain lake. Relief flooded her when he stopped the touching.
"Spent time in jail when I was in Europe."
Couldn't continue to ignore him, now .... "For what??"
Mesmerized by the flames jumping about hellishly in the massive fireplace, Todd ran his hand down the small goatee he sported now. "Started out for a fight in a ... in a rat-trap bar with a couple of Turkish thugs. Stupid ... got myself arrested. Spent the next year or so fighting to get the fuck out. Not as easy thing when you're ..."
Tea said nothing - he had paused his recitation. She reeled from this revelation ... something he'd not told her. He had completely lied about it ... lied about his journey from Llanview and back again, fabricated quite another path.
"I left here ... left Llanview ... um ..." He chuckled oddly and glanced at Tea who was now watching him. "Ironic don't you think? I was terrified of going back to jail ... so I made up that disorder. Got out of jail ... only to end up in some cell in some ... backwards East European country." He grinned ... "They hate Americans. And they hate pissed off, arrogant ones even more."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why? To get your sympathy?"
"Isn't that why you're telling me now?"
"You asked for the truth - I'm giving it to you."
"Todd - you're not capable of telling the truth. What you call the ‘truth' ... I don't what that is to you. It's definitely not what ‘I' call the truth."
Todd took a deep breath and walked to the fireplace, kneeled down. Grabbed a poker and started stabbing at something in the rear portion. He was intent on getting at something ... suddenly a brick slid out of place and he pulled back, tossing the poker aside. He reached behind the moved brick ... reached inside what was obviously a very small hiding place. Pulled out a single sheet paper and handed it to Tea. She took it suspiciously - her eyes narrowing, she keeping an eye on him.
"What's this?" she asked softly as she began to read it. There was a seal on it, imbedded at the top of the paper. The document looked legal, stately. Formal ... but it was in another language. She recognized the country now ... Turkey. He'd been in a Turkish prison. Tea gasped ... sighed, "Oh my God."
"It's not that big a deal ..."
"What the ...."
He laughed, though, his tongue emerging a moment, placed on his lower lip and he sat back. Kept watching her. "You're beautiful, Tea."
"Shut up. How did you get out?"
He shrugged ... replaced the brick again. Patted it ...stared a while again into the fire. "Before I left Llanview ... I wanted to escape so bad from everyone ... everything. I felt guilty, I felt alone." He sniffled, cleared his throat. Coughed. "So I took off for London ... hung out a while. Chilled ... as they say. That's where it started."
"Where .... what started?"
"A chipping away ..."
"Of what?"
Like a crow ... a hawk again .... Todd got to his feet quicky and sat on the armrest of the seat Tea was in. Chewed a moment on his lip ... leaving a glistening bit of wetness that made Tea want to kiss him. She shook off the image in her mind, closed her eyes to it.
"A chipping away of all that was human about me. First there was the guilt over Viki, Sam ... and you. Starr, too... then there was longing for love .... I didn't need it anymore. I could come and go from places ... meet people ... talk with them, fuck ‘em ... in so many ways. I was free ... freer. I still found myself ... feeling things. You know ... I'd see someone poor and begging and I'd give them money. I'd feel something when I saw a stray kid ... or the look of ... someone ..." He turned to the fire again. The flames popped and Tea could see the reflection of the wildness in the green of his eyes. "I felt something whenever I saw a family ... I felt this mild ... tug ... of shame. That didn't last though. Every day that passed, I felt some part of me slip away. I got stronger ... and better in control of myself. Anger ... wouldn't always come. Someone would get in my face and I'd easily walk away from it - I just didn't give a shit. It was all slowly ... and mercifully moving away."
Tea watched him for a bit - noticing that he seemed ... peaceful, oddly comfortable with the story he was telling her. It indeed varied from the stories he shared before - but she wondered now ... why the truth today ... and not earlier. What was the truth ...
"You told me you traveled ... you told me you grew lonelier as the time rolled on. You said the more people you saw and the more places, the more you wanted to come home ... to me. That's what you told me."
He smiled slightly at her, kneeled submissively before her, Tea being forced to look down at him. "I would have said anything to get you to come with me," he whispered. "I knew what would work."
"Why? Just to prove to yourself and the rest of the world what a chump I was, how easy ... how stupid?"
"No ... no ... I thought you understood ... you just didn't know. For six months I saw you ... sleepwalking through your life - like me. Shutting down - not feeling anything anymore. But pretending ... like me."
"Jesus ..."
"I thought ... we'd wake up together. I thought loving each other would wake us up."
"I did wake up. You didn't."
He grumbled ... no, more like growled. And he moved in close to Tea, closer. Got to his feet, put his large hands on the arm rests ... leaned into her. "Wake me up then, Tea. Come on ..." She could feel his breath on her, sweetened by whiskey, his tongue tasted her skin ... moving up her cheek ... making her flesh and insides crawl ...but she couldn't say he repulsed her ... the nearness too familiar, too comforting and terrifying all at the same time. To let him do this was tantamount to being his unwilling passenger in his car, whipping around curves, close to the edges of cliffs ... looking down at torrid waters, black and bottomless ...
"Get away, get away, get away, get away," Tea said, near tears, "God ...damn it..." He didn't stop at her appeal, didn't stop touching her with his lips, the tip of his nose nudging her, awakening her - stirring parts of her she'd shut down on that one night. This wasn't Todd anymore, this was El Diablero playing with her ... teasing her ... wanting to grind himself into her, possess her. "Please ..."
"I love you," he breathed as he moved more on top of her, pulling her down into him, beneath him, her hair catching on the fabric of the cushions. "I love you," he repeated and he pressed against her. His hand moved to her breast, squeezed her tight, hard nipple roughly causing her to gasp, causing her to let him rub his erection against her hard mound - she instinctively working to get some satisfaction. My god, she swore, she screamed inside herself, as she grew wet with need and primal lust - kissing him finally, their tongues touching greedily, hungry for remembrance. Pure ... and plain ... lust.
Reality hit her again, though, pounded into her along with his shivering body and she started to fight him at that, hating his use of the word, ‘love' with her ... how dare he insult her, how dare he mock such a powerful emotion and mix it up with sexual aggression ... blood with wine, a man who would take away love by yanking away a squirming infant, bloody still ... wet from amniotic fluid still ... crying ... and deprive it of its wailing mother ...
"STOP!!" She kicked wildly at him, scratched him, hit at him ... "NO!!"
And he hopped up at that, pulled away, panting ... excited by her, the struggle maybe ... the closeness maybe - the power over her. He chuckled ... a little. Mostly stood there, hair in his eyes, his mouth twitched a little ... a flash of weakness - of disruption. Tea had escaped the claustrophobic seat, sat now at the bottom of stairwell ... at the far end of the room. She looked upwards into the darkness - saw more candles, or rather, what must have been more candlelight. The blackness swayed along the hallway, shifted.
"I don't want to hurt you," he conceded. "I want to make love with you ... I want to feel you again. Why does that scare you? Do I make you sick?"
"They hurt you ... in that prison. Didn't they?"
"No." He spoke his answer quick breathlessly, his features ... remained open, giving off a sense of honesty.
"They must have done something to you ... terrible. For you to disconnect from a child." Tea surprised herself, tears rolling down her cheeks. "A baby," she said beneath her breath.
"No ... nothing could hurt me. I rose above that place ... nothing happened there that differed from anything else. It was just a little damper, a little darker ... a little more of a drag."
"Did they feed you?"
"Not too badly."
"Did they ... beat you?"
"Not really."
"How did you get out? Finally?"
"A lawyer helped me - an English lawyer with connections. I learned to talk to people ... while inside. I learned some things to ... get along in there. I had to."
"But the baby ... Todd ... that's unthinkable. Do you understand the risk you took when you gave him away? Do you?"
He nodded ... a tad. Swallowed visibly. "I didn't know ... it was mine. I had grown to hate him. I had grown to wish he was dead. Hey - that's something, right? Not so ... dead inside? Right?"
He sounded childlike at that - innocent. And she saw a flicker of sorrow cross him, a movement of his brow, a touch of a finger to his thigh ...
"A baby," Tea repeated.
"I hated him, Tea! It's SIMPLE!! Blair made me hate him and hate her ... and to see her cry about the loss ... made me feel better. I'm not proud of this ... I'm being as truthful with you as a I can."
"Did they let you see the outside while you were locked up? Did you feel grass beneath your feet ... or snow ... did you close your eyes to the sun ... ever?"
He looked away ... stepped to the windows. The wind had picked up and Tea thought that glass would fly soon, that the house would be whirled into the blizzard raging outside ... that they'd all disappear into the unknown. Todd, Tea ... and the truth.
"The sun, Todd ... did you ever see the sun?"
"Sure I did ... it leaked through cracks in the wall ... I'd put my face to it ... to the sun. I'd run my fingers along the cracks and the cold stones ... I'd listen to the rats run along the hallways ... I'd talk to them ... tell them where I was, who I was ... I told them the crimes I'd committed - about how it was right that I was there. How we were pals ... me ... the rats ... the darkness." He giggled ... "I sound like a Stephen King novel."
"Why didn't you tell me? All those nights lying together ... all the lies you spun to me ... why?"
"You needed a whole person ... not me. I didn't want pity, Tea. I didn't want your tears over me, while you whispered, ‘poor Todd' ... poor bedraggled, cursed soul. I did something stupid ... like punching an asshole and I ended up paying for it. Nothing mysterious or dramatic ... it just happened. It was a stupid, stupid .... mistake. Now it's your turn. Tell me ... what you have. On me."
Pity. Tea stood up and began walking up the stairs ... wondered if the upper floor boasted as little furniture as the lower one did. Wondered what he kept in all those rooms ... she slowed her ascent and said simply, "I have the witness. I have the person to whom you told ‘get rid of the thing.' I have the midwife ... safe and secure - far away from you. She holds the key to your life."
The darkness hugged Tea, loved her, kissed her grinning lips, as she disappeared up the stairs ....
