Adam finished rinsing his hair, then stood under the scalding water for another minute or so.
The heat was both almost too much to take and a salve.
He wasn’t even sure why he was so bothered. His agitation usually faded after sex, but here he was still, standing in the shower, trying to figure out why the itch in the back of his head wouldn’t go away.
Selena had gone back to work almost immediately, and her office door remained closed.
He’d been hoping for a little post-coital conversation, but she wasn’t in the mood. The sex was great, like it usually was, but the aftermath was empty. As alluring as she’d been with Adam inside her, Selena was all business once done.
“Your trophy,” she’d said, like a teacher handing out participation awards.
And sure, he got it. Selena had work to do. But really, what couldn’t wait until tomorrow? It wasn’t like Sam had given her a deadline. She made a big deal about needing thinking time, expecting the world to revolve around the axis of her mind.
He worked to deadlines, and didn’t get a choice. If Anna Lies got booked on The Tonight Show, he didn’t get the luxury of twiddling his pen for days. Those jokes had to be on the page, punched up, and over to Anna’s inbox hours after he got the text. No matter the comic, the message was usually the same:
Hey second place. It’s a good thing you can write shit, since you sure as hell can’t deliver it. I’ve got some gig where I need to look funnier than I am, and preferably smarter. Can you drop everything you’re doing and let me take credit for your work? I’ll pay you a shit ton per word, but it’s still pennies compared to what I make for existing. The sooner the better. I’d like time to practice. It has to sound natural.
At least his name meant something. If a script wasn’t funny, studios might send Adam a pass. But that work wasn’t consistent, and living outside of Hollywood kept him out of the game, and away from his dream job. Almond Park was Selena’s idea. She’s the one who insisted writers can write anywhere.
Not every kind of writer.
If Adam lived in Hollywood, he might be Judd Apatow. In Almond Park, he could only be Mr. Selena Nash.
He got out of the shower, drying off as he glanced at the mirror. His eyes were tired and he needed a haircut. Still, he looked good for his age. Despite the seven extra pounds. But maybe his age was the problem.
Adam thought about Dane, and the agitation was back.
He had never really liked Dane much, but the boy had really started to bother Adam in the last few months. He was always a needy little shit, hanging around in the kitchen too long, and spending way too much time at their house. Levi and Corban both liked him a lot. Selena doted on him in her way. So Adam eventually got used to him.
But something about the way Selena treated Dane lately had been different, and Adam just couldn’t ignore it.
He wished he’d had the balls to bring it up in their almost-argument back in her office. That eventual blowup was a matter of when, not if. He could feel it brewing. Or maybe something else just as ugly.
He imagined what would have happened if he had done more than fish, if he had actually said what was on his mind: Are you thinking about fucking that kid?
He was probably being paranoid. The boy had lost his mother at a very young age. His father was kind of a dick. It was natural for him to gravitate toward a real family.
Adam put on his boxers and a black tee with bright white lettering:
I’m a writer so that the voices in my head have something productive to do.
Selena thought the T-shirt was funny. She wouldn’t laugh, but maybe she’d smile.
Adam grabbed his tablet and digital pencil, then started to write.
Loose bits, as he didn’t have a current commission. Not that it mattered, funny was funny, and while he liked to have plenty in the bank, right now the coffers were mostly empty.
Because Adam wasn’t feeling especially funny.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Selena, and what she might be thinking about him.
She always asked, What are you writing? even when she didn’t really want to know.
If she didn’t think the joke was funny, he would see it all over her face.
And if you’re trying to be funny, the last thing you want to do is care what people think of the joke. Because humor is born in the black and the blue, and you mustn’t rob it of color. There was a freedom in ghosting the punchlines. If Wayne Hanger said something offensive, he got the glory and the shit. No one wondered if Adam Nash really thought something so awful.
But Selena did. Right now, that kept Adam from writing.
The pencil was moving, but the wrong words had darkened his page.
Dangerous words that needed to be erased.
The pencil kept moving as Adam thought about Dane, wondering if the kid was an issue or if he was growing old and paranoid. What if the problem he was sensing with Selena was really about him? Maybe he was fucking up in some way. Maybe she knew about the girl with the blood-red lipstick before he’d been ready to tell her.
Adam looked down at his work, sickened and aroused.
He couldn’t delete the words without reading them first.
She’s lying naked, face down in a pool of her own blood. It’s beautiful, the way the crimson kisses her body. The pool continues to spread. The blood is fresh enough to leave its taste in the air. I lick my lips and swallow. Then I kiss her flesh, everywhere. My face is covered in her blood.
I turn her around to stare at the front of her body. The woman in blood-red lipstick. My obsession. The perfect eyes in the perfect face on the perfect head and body. Oh, the body. I am inside it, and inside you. I live for those final few moments together, when our pulses will be pounding as one.
Then, like always, Adam deleted the first paragraph and added the second to his archive, protecting the worst of his thoughts.
He’d been following the woman in blood-red lipstick for a while now, and writing about her for nearly as long. His usual pattern had yet to fail him. But this was the longest it had ever been. Selena usually noticed by now. But she had never been this preoccupied.
Or so … unavailable.
The woman in lipstick was there whenever Adam wanted to see her. Or at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though only in the afternoons, and on one weekend day until closing, usually Sunday. Those seven extra pounds, all dairy, and every one of them gained after he’d started going to see her. Selena hadn’t noticed that either.
For a moment, while he’d been fucking his wife on her desk, he’d pretended she was the woman with the blood-red lipstick.
Adam looked down at his tablet and considered erasing the rest. Maybe deleting them all. What good was his word porn doing him, sitting like liquid crystal evidence? Sure, he changed the passcode regularly. But what if one of the boys guessed it? There were ways to crack a tablet too, and if Selena was suspicious that he was hiding something from her, it wasn’t unthinkable that she’d do whatever it took to figure it out. Maybe even get that little shit Dane to help her. The nerdy kid probably knew a dozen apps that would do it.
Adam tried to write something else, working himself into a sweat trying to shove aside the thoughts of her crimson lips, red streaks smeared on her alabaster skin, her naked body dripping with blood.
But still they lingered. And still the words refused to come.
He set his tablet on the nightstand and traded it for the remote.
He turned on Netflix, scrolled to The Thick Red Line, and forwarded to his favorite part.
Lily Templeton had a lot in common with the girl in the blood-red lipstick. Every time he watched this documentary, every time he saw Lily covered in blood, Adam imagined her.
But neither the girl in lipstick nor Lily Templeton was anything like Selena.
His wife filled him with a different sort of fantasy.
Even after all these years, he was obsessed. That those feelings seemed to be fading filled him with an arctic sadness. And Adam knew only one way to warm it.