The Trouble With Apples and Trees

A Maddening Mystery

“Soooo...?” Clive questions after Lily leaves them. “What’s the big emergency and just so you know,” he prattles on from one topic to another in the way that only Clive can. “I took charge over setting up the stage for you since you were so incapacitated. You look like s**t by the way. And don’t forget, I agreed to drop everything to meet you here because you agreed to pay for my beer.”

Just the mention of alcohol riles Jesse’s already nauseated stomach inciting the urge to hurl right there on the table. He’d done enough of that before leaving his house so he swallows it down again and take’s Lily’s advice sniffing the mug of steaming coffee.

She’s a genius, that one.

He ignores Clive’s comment about having to drop everything and grumbles, “trust me, I feel like it too.” Then he says with a grimace, “but I didn’t strike out last night,” to correct the assumption that he had.

“No, I was there. You did,” Clive assures him with a chortle. “Spectacularly. You didn’t just strike out. You tanked. Bombed!” he keeps going. “You’ve been out of the game for too long, my friend. You’re probably just too hungover to remember and I gotta point out," he adds with a slight shake of h

is head. "That’s maybe for the best. Let's just hope that everyone who had been there is hungover too."

Jesse gives him a puzzled look as he tries to stitch together the trickle of fragmented pieces of his memory as they roll in.

“Look,” Clive tells him. “Not that I was thrilled about it, but I drove you home myself. Well not home-home,” he corrects. “You asked me to drop you off at the cemetery and made a joke about waking the dead. Do you have any idea how much I want to hit you for that? Those twins were hot. I had them eating out of my hands.”

“Says you,” Jesse grunts with skepticism. “I have no recollection of those events.”

“Well it happened,” Clive assures him.

“What happened after that?” Jesse asks in a much more somber tone. “After the cemetery.”

“I asked you if you wanted me to stay with you and you said no,” he answers his voice gentled too. “What’s this about, Jesse?”

Jesse ponders the question along with Clive’s sworn statement about the happenings of last night. As the professional tale spinner that he is, he’s not sure if it would be wise to rely solely on the recount of Clive Kincaid. More so because, the picture that he’s painting doesn’t coincide with the ones in Jesse’s mind -- of obscured hands touching him. Plus, there’s the evidence of distinct small finger nail bites imprinted in his skin.

“How drunk were you last night?” he asks Clive even if he is afraid to know the answer. “Let me see your hands.”

“Not at all,” his friend answers as, with a confused look on his face, he raises his hands per Jesse's request.

“I drew the short straw. Designated driver,” he explains.

“Oh thank God,” Jesse breathes. “I thought you and I might have...” he starts to explain but waves the idea away with the relief he feels.

“What is going on?” Clive presses. “You’re kind of starting to freak me out.”

“I had s*x with someone last night,” Jesse blurts out.

“No, you did not,” Clive responds in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. “The amount of whisky you consumed would have rendered your ability to perform null and void.”

Lowering his voice and leaning across the table, Jesse says, “unless you or someone else is in the habit of dropping used condoms in people’s beds,” but stops when the thought provokes a creeped out shudder through his body.

Then he continues, “or there is some truth to the excuse that Mr. Landry gave his wife about being haunted by spirits that time he came home with a hickey and smelling like another woman’s perfume then, I slept with someone last night. How do you explain these?” he questions as he chucks off one sleeve of his leather jacket to reveal his arm.

Clive blinks at him, then nods his approval. “Alright,” he cheers softly. “Congratulations then. So...what’s the problem?”

Keeping his voice in a whisper, Jesse informs him, “I don’t remember any of it. I have no idea who it was.”

Clive keeps nodding his head, the movement making Jesse feel like he’s on a dingy out in the water.

“Again, I don’t see how the problem is here,” he says with a shrug. “That was the point of last night."

“You don’t understand,” Jesse moves in closer and lowers his voice even further to say. “It happened in my bedroom. Which means that I was home. Which means that if you didn’t drive a woman home with me, I slept with someone here in Fresh Water.”

Clive gasps, his eyes widening with understanding.

“Dude,” he hisses. “That is strictly against the rules.”

“It gets worse,” Jesse whines then reaches for his phone.

“How could anything be worse than...” Clive starts to complain but his words are cut off to focus on the screen when Jesse hikes his phone up to his face.

“When I went to call you earlier, my call history was already opened,” he explains. “The last person I called around before midnight was Tullisa.”

The information takes a few moments to sink into Clive’s brain. His eyebrows draw down and his eyes shift quickly while he tries to connect the dots. Once he puts two and two together, his light green eyes turn wide as saucers and chokes on a breath of air that has him breaking into a fit of coughs.

“No!” he exclaims when his lungs are able to function again. “You banged Tullisa? That is definitely not in the rules.”

“Shhh...” Jesse hisses. “Keep your damn voice down.” he orders quietly.

“Jesse,” Clive drawls out in a tone that says he is both impressed yet wary and that Jesse should be too. Then he gasps again. “You’re a walking dead man, you know that right? Lily is going to castrate you.”

Jesse groans his acknowledgement of what he knows is a fact. If he had slept with Tullisa, Lily is going to do more than just castrate him but that is the least of his worries. With the possible reality spoken out loud and staring him in the face, he feels even sicker than he already does.

He knows Tullisa well enough and by that he means all her life. This could ruin everything and he expresses as much to Clive.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Clive says in a way that suggests he may have a plan to help.

Jesse waits for him to continue but finds his expectant stare returned with one of amusement on his friend's face.

“You’re sweating buckets,” Clive laughs.

"That's really unhelpful," Jesse responds. “I don’t know if it was her,” he explains although that doesn’t make the situation any better. “I mean the call lasted only a few seconds. So maybe...I don’t know,” he says in a panicked tone. “I really don’t remember. How do I find out?”

“I have no idea,” Clive answers with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

“What do you mean you have no idea?” Jesse seethes. “This is your field. Your area of expertise. You got me into this mess and you are going to help me fix it.”

“Yes,” Clive agrees with a look of pride on his face. Then he says to Jesse, “I get that you’re new to this lifestyle so I’m going to lay it out for you in a way that you will understand. The point of drunk s*x, no-strings-attached s*x, one night stand s*x, but particularly drunk s*x,” he counts out on his finger. “Is to not remember. Whether it was good or bad and most likely it was bad, you will feel no shame. No one goes looking for the person they had s*x with while high or drunk. It just doesn’t happen.”

Jesse feels even sicker.

“I’m sorry, man,” Clive offers sincerely. “I don’t think there’s any way to fix it. You can’t ‘un’ have s*x with the town’s most wholesome girl. Just try to focus on the silver lining," he suggests.

"Which is what exactly?" Jesse huffs.

"At least you wrapped it up. She's not going to get pregnant and because it's Tullisa then you know you didn't catch anything," he lists.

None of it helps Jesse feel better.

“But it’s Tullisa,” he complains. “The girl I’ve looked at as a baby sister all her life. What am I supposed to do? Pretend it did not happen?”

“Sister...right,” Clive snorts. “And that’s the exact reason why you can’t pretend that it did not happen. Even for me that would be a jerk move.”

Before Jesse can question him, Reed Schumacher walks into The Fresh Water Bucket carrying that usual air of self-importance all around him.

“Yeah, I was thinking of asking Tullisa to go with me,” he says to Dan Meyers walking in behind him and loud enough for everyone within earshot to hear. “She’s really beautiful. My colleagues would be so impressed. I just don’t know about her unique name, you know? It lacks the culture and sophistication of a true socialite. It’s so backwater. I’m not sure how my colleagues will accept it. Maybe she has a middle name, like Charlotte or something that she can use.”

The entire conversation upsets Jesse and makes him want to puke for a different reason. Or ram his fist straight into Reed’s pompous nose.

As he passes by their table and opens his mouth to greet both Jesse and Clive, Clive sticks his leg out causing Reed to stumble and grab the table to keep himself upright.

“Hey Shoemaker," Clive teases in that way he used to when they were children.

Reed straightens and rights his full three piece suit even if there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

“Well,” he mutters under his breath. “I see that some things never change. Will you ever outgrow being such a juvenile. You know, this infantile behviour is why you will never get out of this town.”

“When did you get back?” Clive asks like he hadn’t just been insulted.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Reed answers.

An awkward pause settles around the four men and Clive breaks it with a low chuckle.

“Good one,” he says. “And actually, I wouldn’t like to know,” he answers. “I’m not even sure why I asked. I’m really not interested because you are the most basic person I’ve ever had the unfortunate displeasure of knowing.”

“I see you’ve graduated from pop up reading books. Good for you, buddy. Keep visiting that thesaurus,” Reed quips.

“Have you ever bothered to find out why her mother named her Tullisa?” Jesse interrupts to end the retaliation from Clive that he knows is coming.

Reed shrugs his shoulders and answers, “I just figured it’s because she’s weird.”

Jesse grits his teeth to keep from retaliating himself as Reed leaves them to walk to the counter.

“I’ve never liked that guy,” Clive says as he stares at Reed's back.

“You do provoke him on purpose,” Jesse answers to his comment. “It’s like watching really bad foreplay.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Clive warns with a shudder.

While Clive’s dislike for Reed is purely immature and stems simply from him not liking Reed's stuffy look for a guy who had been raised the same way that they had, Jesse’s reasons are far more personal.