AllFreeNovel
Share Us
FOUNDATION STONE
Jax Baynard
The house was not yet a house, though it had a roof and four walls which suggested it might one day become one. The inside was cool and dim, light coming from the paneless windows open to the dusky sky. Julia prowled, her running shoes quiet on the subfloors. The rough framing formed skeletal hands between the rooms. Kitchen, laundry room, guest bath, the hall with its high ceiling already in shadow. She ran lightly up the stairs of Carrara marble, starkly formal against the plywood, impervious to weather and time. She moved soundlessly through the upstairs rooms, master bedroom and bath—the latter alone the size of her living room—thinking of the lives that would be lived here. They would have money, whoever these people were. More marble in the bathroom, this time of a soft pink variety, with thready gray veining, as if a burly man from one of the Italian quarrying families had shown up, installed his marble on his own time and departed, leaving behind him a trail of sawdust, ruined schedules, change orders and coffee stains.
She found a back staircase off one of the smaller bedrooms and emerged in the great room. All the houses in the Hollywood Hills had one, to take advantage of the view, ostensibly, but also to say without words: This is how much money I have. You? Julia had no money to speak of. She had brown hair and green eyes and if she had a great body it was because she took it running come rain (never very likely) or shine for an hour and a half most days. She was not a model or an actress. She was not working on a screenplay. She was not a waitress, aspiring to be a model or an actress. She lived, for nominal rent, in the guesthouse of a friend of her Aunt Gwyne’s and she worked at the observatory. She was single, though she dated enough to know the myth about men always wanting sex was a myth. She was hard pressed to find one who wanted it once a week, much less once a day.
“Trespassing?” someone said.
Technically, she wasn’t. There were no doors, just openings where they would be, eventually, with locks connected to an expensive security system. “Yes,” she said. It was him. She thought of him as the Builder; he was probably the architect or the site manager. She had walked past for five months, from when the house was nothing but a gouge in the hillside. She did not always see him. Occasionally, he lifted a hand in greeting and she waved back. They had never spoken and she had never been this close to him. “Nice marble,” she said.
“Not quite your speed?” he asked, coming into the room.
Julia shrugged. “Is the house a home yet?”
He glanced at her, then pondered, in the gathering twilight, what was left of the view. Pinpricks of light were beginning to show through the haze. “The little people down on the flats,” she had a heard a visitor at the observatory call them.
“It has an owner, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t know if that will make it a home.” He shrugged in turn.
He was good looking, this man, Julia thought. A genetic accident, her mother would have said. Her mother was a scientist. She thought in molecules and double twists of DNA. It was her way of saying Pretty is as pretty does. It’s what’s inside the person that counts. Julia thought of the clothes she had left, the jewels, the walk-in closet the size of her entire house, the marriage she had walked out of, and felt the great burden of weariness she carried with her, always. It took time to know a person; years, in fact. This man might have hidden depths, glittering at the bottom of the ocean like treasure. He might be half a man. She had no way of knowing.
“My name is Graham,” he said. He held out his hand. Julia looked at it like an offering made in a country where one is unfamiliar with the customs, but it did not waver. She put her hand in his. It was not bad to be touching him.
“Julia,” she said. She stared at him in what little light was left. Dark hair, light eyes, tanned skin. A bump in his otherwise aquiline nose. Wide shoulders, a solid body, as if he, too, spent time somewhere other than standing around a construction site all day. She realized she liked having her hand in his.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked, and Julia had a brief memory, a flicker in celluloid, of a coffeepot sitting on the granite countertop in the kitchen.
“I’d rather have bourbon,” she said.
He had not let go of her ha
nd. It was nearly dark, but a glow coming from behind him said the house was electrified and there was a light on somewhere. “That could be arranged,” he said. He pulled her a step closer. “Do you know what a foundation stone is?”
She shook her head, wanting to know what he smelled like. It was important, what men smelled like. It was what the sheets would smell like the next morning.
“Before there was concrete”—his hand continued to hold hers; the other began to learn the shape of her forearm from wrist to elbow—“foundations were built of stone. Builders were usually the owners of the houses and it was the custom in that country to lay a foundation stone, sometimes near the hearth, sometimes at the north corner of the house, marked with the date and name of the family. This was known”—he was touching her bicep, her shoulder, trailing his fingers across her exposed collarbones, his touch overtly sexual now—“as the first memory of the house.” Julia did not move away and that was answer enough. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said, giving her time to object. She didn’t move. It was her neck he kissed. And sucked. And licked. “I’ll keep doing this until you touch me,” he murmured, as if she had forgotten an item of protocol.
Julia lifted her hands, till now hanging by her sides like so much flotsam. She put them on his back, pulling up the tails of his shirt to absorb the warmth of his skin. “Here?” she asked. “Now?” She had learned to be direct. It saved time.
He stopped what he was doing to look at her. He pulled the tie from her hair and smoothed the tangles with his fingers. “What do you need?” he said.
“I want to feel something other than disgust,” Julia said. She could feel the pounding of her own heart, the liquid rush between her legs, the prickling of sweat across her chest.
Graham kissed her again, not on the mouth. “I want to tie you up,” he said, “and fuck you.” Her eyes widened only slightly. He could be direct, too. “Will you run?” he said. He lifted his hands, making it easy for her to go.
“I don’t think so,” she answered.
He walked away. “On this,” he said.
