Idol of Pleasure

The push mower's dull rattle droned in Kent’s ears, blades whirring through the grass. His body strained beneath the midday sun, and through damp lashes, he caught the blur of a cherry-red convertible roaring down the road—top down, laughter trailing like exhaust.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, wiping away another hand of sweat.

The mower sputtered as he yanked it over a thick patch near Julie’s hydrangeas. He imagined Marcus at the wheel, music cranked, their friends crowded in the back seat, already sunburned and salty from the ocean. They wouldn’t miss him today; they probably hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t around these days.

The sun seared, hammering against his back, arms, the nape of his neck where his hair stuck and tangled. Kent tried not to groan, but it was getting harder not to resent the injustice of it all. He trudged along, kicking dust into the air, each pass of the mower a reminder of how thoroughly he'd been screwed.

Two weeks ago, he’d been carefree, tossing a ball back and forth with Marcus in his front yard. It had all gone wrong so fast: Marcus’ wild throw, laughing at Kent’s half-hearted protest, goading him to catch it. Kent squinted against the sky; his hand fumbled the air. The dull clang was the sound of his afternoon crashing against Julie’s car, leaving a perfect circle of incrimination in the glossy finish.

They'd both stared—Marcus with lips curled around the brink of a "whoops," and Kent with his gut unraveling through his shirt.

Marcus caught his eye and smiled like he’d planned the whole thing. "No one saw. Chill, man!" Kent opened his mouth, closed it, hoped it wasn’t as big a deal as he feared.

It was.

The door slammed with the sharp report of impending disaster, and there was Julie in full fury, an avenging angel with a tan. "Which one of you incompetent brats—" She halted, eyes narrowing at the guilty-looking crease on her convertible’s door. Her voice fell, low and venomous. "—thinks this is funny?"

Kent swallowed. He hated the dryness in his mouth, the stickiness on his palms. He hated the dent in the car, hated Marcus's grin, and hated even more how it slid away into something else. Something innocent, friendly. "Hey, Ms. Bentley. We were just leaving a note."

She crossed the lawn with the gait of someone used to having her way, every step as dangerous as an exclamation mark. "Try again, boys."

"We were—"

"He threw it," Kent interrupted. "It got away from him. We’ll get it fixed."

"Kent..." Marcus raised his eyebrows, a betrayed chorus of one.

"You’re damn right you’ll get it fixed." Julie’s attention speared Kent and held. He could feel Marcus shifting, inching toward the door. "And you’ll work off every cent. Both of you."

The pause stretched longer than the afternoon sun. "I guess I can help," Marcus finally said, with the agonized **** of a guy donating a kidney. "If I don’t work weekends, and if Mom doesn’t ground me again—"

"Save it," Kent muttered, already caught, already sentenced. He’d seen this play out before. "I’ll take care of it."

Marcus’s hand clamped on his shoulder with all the sincerity of a condolence card bought half-price. "Thanks, bro. I’ll owe you."

"I know you will," Kent had replied, staring past Julie's gloating smile to where Marcus, framed by sunlight and betrayal, had slouched away.

Back in the present, the sun hadn’t moved. Kent kicked the mower into a new row, ignoring how his arms shook from the effort, ignoring how his thoughts spun through pointless what-ifs. He ducked his head, let the work and heat crush him down until he was too small to bother with.

The next pass went easier. Resignation did that—took the sting out of unfairness like Novocain. Kent mowed numbly, lines and rows blurring into one another until the grass lay behind him.

Two more weeks of this? A lifetime? Might as well. Julie was a woman who knew how to wield silence as well as threats. Not for the first time, Kent wondered why Marcus ever threw the damn ball.

He finished, choked the mower dead, wiped sweat from his eyes. His skin felt crispy and tight. All he needed was a dive, no a dip—of his toe into the pool. That would fix it all.

"Is this a joke to you?" Julie's voice, another thing that refused to wilt in the heat.

Kent was shaken back to the present, and caught in the scent of chlorine and coconut oil threading through the afternoon air. He was standing on the edge of the water as Julie stretched relaxingly, every move as intentional as the flick of her gaze.

Her bikini clung like sweat, and Kent's eyes traced its path against his will.

"This isn't acceptable," she said. "Again."

He wanted to disappear into the chlorinated depths, but she was already lounging back, already dismissing him from her thoughts as she dangled new chores between them like a cat with an injured mouse.

"A kid your age shouldn’t have such a hard time keeping up." Julie's eyes glinted like a promise he wasn't going to get. Kent swallowed a retort, tasted salt on his upper lip instead. She knew the effect she had, both in giving orders and ignoring them. "My daughter could do better."

"I doubt that." The words slipped out with a touch more venom than he'd meant.

Kent turned away, wanting to muffle the clink of ice against her glass with his own hands around her throat. Or maybe his own hands around his own throat. He couldn’t decide.

"I don't need attitude. I need that lawn mowed right."

It was a subtle dance of dominance. One she performed like a pro, even reclining. Julie's skin shone like polished bronze under the sun. The same sun had Kent looking like a washed-up sweat rag by comparison. A rag that hadn't worked off his debt, yet.

Julie glanced back at the pool, effectively tossing him from her thoughts, while he stood dumbly in the tangle of lust, obligation, and a boy’s last ounce of pride.

"You want me to go over it again?" His voice cracked—broke around the words.

Her chin tilted up, uninterested. "If it’s not perfect, you’ll keep doing it until it is. Start with the hedges. I expect more from you."

Kent shuffled away, back toward the toolshed.

Home. Kent made his way home that night, in a huff. The familiar house sat quiet and useless, just like his last three paychecks.

Mom greeted him as he trudged through the kitchen door, hand resting on his shoulder—too gentle to be real sympathy. Dad folded a corner of the paper down, equally gentle. "Get it all finished up?"

Kent slumped into the chair across from them, felt himself sink. "Not quite. She keeps adding stuff—"

Mom shook her head. "She wouldn’t do that if you did it right the first time, honey."

"I did do it right! She’s just—" Beautiful, unreasonable, half-naked, impossible. The words tangled up in each other, fell into a frustrated heap at his feet. "—Julie. I’ll never get it done."

Dad was halfway through a reply when Kent cut in. "Can you at least admit this is bullshit?"

"Language, Kent." Mom’s voice held the same note Julie’s did. "You know why you have to finish. We’ve been over this. A hundred times."

"A thousand," Kent grumbled, feeling very young and very old at once.

"A hundred," Dad agreed, unfolding another section of newspaper.

It wasn’t what Kent wanted, but it was more than he'd get from Julie. "She says it’ll take weeks."

"Not if you stick with it," Mom said.

That sounded suspiciously like something he told himself when he woke up to do it all over again.

"I’m not being unreasonable. Marcus should—"

Dad’s look cut him off. "Marcus should listen to his mother and be more like you. Get your things done instead of complaining. It’ll build character, son."

Kent braced against the edges of their insistence, the too-smooth conviction he felt slipping past him like oil on water. He needed it rougher, sharper, like sandpaper. Instead, they filed him down to nothing, left him to carry the pieces.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Character."

Kent walked through the inferno to Julie’s again the next morning. The sprinklers had done more to cool the yard than he ever would.

She let him in, and Kent found himself in the toolshed again. He was being dramatic, he knew it, but he saw himself doomed to middle age before he left this hellscape.

That’s why you did it, Marcus. To build character. That’s what Kent wanted to believe.

He hoisted a gas can, hated the way it felt so familiar. "Get it all finished up?" he muttered, mocking more than himself.

At the edge of the yard, Marcus’s words snagged his thoughts. "Thanks, bro. I’ll owe you."

Kent cringed inwardly, the flashback was as unwelcome as Marcus’s easy grin. He wasn’t getting anything out of this. The mower whirred to life again, drowning out the last bit of sanity Kent had.

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