Abuse: The Complete Trilogy (9 page)

“The reason
for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.”

― C.G.
Jung

~~~

Grant
Wilkinson

“It will be good
for you to speak with a woman, I think.”

I doubt it.

I shake my head.
Could I ever talk to anyone else about my father?

For a moment, my
mind flashes to the attractive blonde stewardess on the flight here. I recall
the feel of her small, soft hand in mine, and the electric pleasure of her
touch. It had been one brief, exhilarating moment of real
connection.

For once, I
didn’t feel that lonely, aching emptiness inside.

Could physically
relating with a woman in this way be worth the anxiety? The thought is tempting
and exciting yet also terrifying.

“Sex is a natural
and important part of life, Grant,” André continues. “It is built into the DNA.
You are an honorable man who does not know your own self-worth. Being satisfied
with your sex life will solve many problems. Perhaps you will find you can have
a relationship with a woman. Perhaps you may even find love. This is what I
wish for you.”

Yeah, right.

I laugh and the
sound of it is jarringly brittle and sarcastic. “Just tell me how much cash to
bring. I won’t inflict myself on anyone without giving the poor woman adequate
compensation.”

“
Naturellement,
yet it is for me to pay her, from the fees I charge you.”

I raise my
eyebrows, but say nothing. I pay André a small fortune from the income I get
from my father’s business. It seems an elegant sort of karma, really. My father
created the ridiculous and pathetic mess I’m in. Ultimately, he’s paying for it
with his company and money, so I can hopefully figure out how to live a
somewhat normal life.

In terms of my
family and myself, the cost has been very high. The vast sums of money I’ve
spent in rehab and counseling have been the least of the price.

Gustave pulls up
to my hotel, his head staunchly faces forward. I’m sure he’d wait right here
all day, unless André gives him a signal to get out.

“I will oversee
Renata’s work with you, but I trust her,” he reassures me. “She is kind and she
is clever. She will understand. You will be able to be yourself with her.”

I say nothing.

“She also adores
sex,” he adds with a wolfish grin.

Just thinking of
sex makes me a nervous wreck, but I give him a faint smile at his comment, as
André knew I would.

“Do not look so
serious, my friend. All will be well. If you are comfortable with her, she can
take over your case, I think. Of course, my door will always be open.” His dark
eyes gleam teasingly. “But a woman can assist you in ways I cannot, no?”

He’s wearing the
“we are both men and we both love sex” look. It’s a traditional male bonding
kind of thing. Just us men here.

I ran into shit
like this in the Army.

Not being a
‘normal’
man, I can’t really relate to the sentiment. Yet, I like André, so again, I
attempt a smile.

“The vacation is finished.
Sleep and eat well tonight. You will meet the sexual therapist for your first
session tomorrow afternoon.”

What?

Instant
lightheadedness and the strange sensation of blood draining from my face is not
a pleasant feeling. My heart skips a beat and then begins to pound madly in my
chest and throat.

Christ on a fucking
crutch! Tomorrow?

I’m going to
meet a sexual therapist.

For sex.

Tomorrow.

I swallow hard. A
bizarre mixture of longing and dread causes a spike of adrenaline to surge
through my veins. I think of another lifelong compulsion, one that has never
been as problematic as my compelling need to “look” and “not look” at dicks.

It’s the
overpowering desire to have sex with a woman—and overpowering desire
not
to
have sex with a woman.

Shit. Shit.
Shit.

This’ll be much
different from a quick in and out against a wall in a dark alley. I’ll actually
be able to see the body and face of the woman I’m fucking. Sweet Jesus, will
she want to
talk about it
afterwards?

As a recovering
alcoholic, I think of having a drink from time to time—in fact, almost every
day. At this difficult moment, the smooth, comforting taste of malt whisky
sounds not only good to me, but almost essential.

I want to lose
myself in alcohol, drinking myself into an unconscious stupor. I crave the
delicious, soul numbing oblivion I can only get from the heavenly golden liquid
that comes out of a bottle.

Sight and sound;
everything seems to dim into a cottony haze, as shock and dread freezes me in
place.

Shit.

I feel so damn lost.

I don’t know if I
can do this.

Gustave finally
gets out of the car. I have no idea what the signal was, but he goes to the
trunk of the limo, pulls out my bag and opens my door for me. After five days
away in the wilds of nature with only an occasional dip in the ice-cold
Colorado River, my clothes are dirty and I badly need a shower.

Dirt will wash
away.

But the monstrous
filth I have buried inside me? Not so much.

André puts out
his hand for me to shake. It looks like a gentlemanly goodbye, but it’s really
an agreement about tomorrow. A pact that I’ll be available to meet this new
therapist. Meet her… and have sex with her.

With trembling
fingers that refuse to hold still, I take his hand.

Composed and
serene, I feel the solid strength of his grip while he ignores my obvious case
of nerves.

“Call me if you
get, how do they say? Ah, the cold feet,” he says with a self-deprecating
smile.

The man speaks
perfect English when he wants to. I know him so well. André’s attempting to set
me at ease.

Yeah, right.
As if that’s going to happen.

His eyes soften
with sympathy and understanding for my plight. “I admire you, Grant. I vow this
is true. You have reason to be proud. For you, each day is a triumph. You have
come so very, very far, and now? Now you shall go even further.”

His expression is
earnest and heartfelt.

I give him a
half-smile, lower my gaze and shake my head. The man doesn’t lie—he never does.
If anything, he’s brutally honest.

André’s sincere
praise warms me, giving me the strength and the courage to face my screwed up
self. He’s the only one in the whole world who actually knows who I am. Despite
my past, this clever Frenchman genuinely likes me.

In a weird way, I
can almost imagine André
loves
me. I’ve shared my darkest secrets and he
accepts and understands them.

If that isn’t
love, what is?

André treats me
as if I’m a normal guy, when we both know I’m far from it. He doesn’t think I’m
a monster. Maybe, just maybe… he’s right.

My throat feels dry
and thick. I don’t trust my voice.

“Thank you,” I
murmur quietly, and my eyes are beginning to sting with strong emotion.

I can’t help but
despise myself. I wouldn’t do this surrogacy thing if my counselor wasn’t
recommending it so strongly. In actual fact, it feels more like he’s making me.

I remember what
he told me earlier:
I could never successfully fight against your
indomitable will—even if I wanted to—which I do not.

André isn’t
making
me
do anything. I trust him and this is what he recommends for my next
step.

But I’m nervous
as hell at the thought of having sex with a woman. Has any man ever been so
pathetic?

André will pay
her. No doubt, she’ll be much older. Maybe she’ll even have warts or something
and be as ugly as I am. That’ll be fine—
better,
in fact. And she’ll have
done this kind of thing before.

Facing myself and
my past is intense… and tough as hell. I’d so much rather have someone shooting
at me.

At least then I
could shoot back.

I slow my breathing
in an attempt to gain control of myself. I’m tough, I’m stubborn and I’m a
determined man, but these emotional highs and lows while facing the guilt,
fears and confusion of a lifetime are sometimes just a little too much.

Once more, I feel
like crying.

“I wasn’t
trying to hurt anyone.”

— Stan Huber

~~~

Stan Huber

Saturday morning,
Stan “The Man” Huber felt sick and terrified. He’d never been in in trouble
with the law—he’d never even had a parking ticket before. Yet, here he was,
locked away in jail.

Stan hadn’t been
able to sleep. That wasn't possible in such close proximity to all the other
men, with all the unfamiliar noises and angry voices—not to mention the
uncomfortable bed.

He was so
frightened and nervous. One little line of cocaine would chill him out, but
that wasn’t possible.

It was 11 a.m.
His father and lawyer were in an interview room with him. They’d been arguing
and questioning him for well over an hour. Even before they’d arrived, he was
already wired and overwrought.

Stan’s arrest report
stated Officers C. Ortega and L. Stratton observed Stanley Richard Huber commit
a traffic violation for failure to stop at a red light. A traffic stop was
conducted on the Fergus Road in Dallas, Texas at approximately 12:20 a.m.

Mr. Huber was the
driver of the car. Dallas police officers Ortega and Stratton viewed white
powder on the defendant’s face, and an open plastic bag on the console of the
vehicle. A field test of the contents, tested positive for cocaine. The car was
searched on probable cause, and the amount of cocaine found had a weight of
just under 8.0 grams.

It stated that
Stanley Huber did knowingly and intentionally conspire to possess with intent
to distribute 8 gm of a substance containing a detectable amount of cocaine, a
Schedule 1 controlled substance, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 846.

Stan was arrested
early Saturday morning and incarcerated in the Dallas county lock up.
Unfortunately, arraignment wouldn’t occur until Monday. He had all Saturday and
Sunday in jail to consider his situation before seeing the judge.

His lawyer
doubted the possibility of him making bail.

His lawyer, Mr.
Tomas R. Leary, was supposed to be the best in his field. He was also the most
expensive attorney that could be found. He was charging double for coming in on
a Saturday morning. As he had extensive loans with Mr. Jack Huber’s bank, Leary
believed that assisting him and his youngest son was a worthy cause in his own
best interest.

The three men sat
around a table, each with white, Styrofoam cups before them. Their coffees had been
finished long ago.

Jack Huber,
despite his quiet manner, was an aggressive bull of a man who was not used to
excuses or failure. He wanted Stan out of jail
now.

About fifty years
old, the lawyer wore a silk, tailor-made suit. He was a pear-shaped individual
with wire-rimmed glasses and the kind of red face that displayed a familiarity
with fine liquor.

“I’ll talk to the
DA, protesting unlawful search and a case of a young man not properly
Mirandized,” Leary said gruffly, trying to keep the whine out of his voice.
“But that dog won’t hunt. Your boy was caught red-handed and with just under 8
gm. They want to charge him with a Class ‘A’ Felony, which would give him ten
years in a US Federal Prison.”

“That’s not going
to happen,” Stan’s father repeated in a soft, menacing voice. “They can’t prove
it. My boy had no money on him and has none in his bank account. There’s no
evidence of him selling cocaine. He has a habit, that’s all. We’ll get him
treatment for that.”

Stan knew how
impossible it was for anyone to go against his father’s wishes. Somehow, his
dad always got his way. Intimidating this lawyer was easy for his dad, but the
law was the law. On the other hand, his father had lots of people who owed him
favors. Maybe there were a few running the court system.

There was a long
silence.

“Well, he has no
priors,” the lawyer said with a sigh. “I’ll push for a misdemeanor. At best,
he’d get six months in a low security jail and a few years probation, but—”

“No jail time,”
Mr. Huber growled.

“I can’t do
that—not with that amount of cocaine in his possession! I’m a lawyer, not a
magician.”

“How
can
you make that happen?” Mr. Huber asked.

“I need something
else. Stanley needs to give up some names. The police want the guys who sold
him illegal drugs.”

Stan shrunk back
in his seat as both men turned glowering eyes on him.

“I can’t,” Stan
choked out, his voice almost a whisper. This was a nightmare. His head ached
and he longed for his own bed.

“You
will,
”
his father demanded.

“They’d kill me,
dad. You know the saying. 'Snitches end up in ditches.’ I’d get out of going to
jail, but I’d have to go into witness protection or something or I’d be dead.”
He took a deep breath in. “There must be another way.”

The lawyer shook
his head. “Not unless you know of some other high profile crime you can give
up. If you did? Well, then I could plea-bargain you down to a misdemeanor.
Depending on what you know, I might be able to get you off with probation and
counseling.”

Stan blinked.

In that fraction
of a second, when he re-opened his eyes, the whole world seemed different.

He thought of the
scary characters here in county lock up. Federal prison would be so much
worse—it would be total hell. Stan knew that if he did real time, he’d probably
die in jail—or maybe he’d just
want
to die.

He was young,
slim and physically attractive. He’d heard stories of what went on with violent
inmates when they were locked up.

Survival is a
powerful motivating force. It’s inborn and hardwired right into a person’s DNA.

There are
incredible tales of the things people have endured in the cause of
self-interest and self-preservation. They’ve survived in the wilderness or in
the ice cold. Humans have gone weeks without food and have even been known to
cut off their own limbs in order to escape death.

There’s no limit
to what one might do when their life is on the line. When they’re desperate to
stay alive.

Stan wanted to
live.

He thought about
his best friend, Alex’s father, Chester Wilkinson. He’d been a well-known ‘man
of the people’ who’d ‘accidentally’ tumbled to his death. His would be
considered a very high profile case.

Chester Wilkinson
had been murdered. Other than the killer, Stan figured he was the only one who
knew about it.

Ordinarily, he’d
have kept his mouth shut. Stan wasn’t the kind of guy who went running around
flapping his gums just because he could. But this was different. Stan was in
real trouble.

His friend, Alex
would never forgive him. It was too bad and he was sorry for it, but he simply
couldn’t go to jail.

“I have an idea,”
Stan said.