Free Secret Sins: (A Standalone) by CD Reiss

system so we could get all the boxes back in place, but it would still be a big job. We were deep into the woods.
    I went back in to meet him. I was going to say something like, “Hey, I think we gotta ditch this,” but he stood over an open box, looking at the contents with silent reverence, and I knew. I stood next to him. It was late, and the trailer’s fluorescents flickered blue.
    “Is this it?” I said, standing next to him, staring at the box’s contents.
    Master tape boxes. Ampex. Four of them. A folder. An envelope. He put his hand on a box marked Kentucky Killer . They’d recorded it for Untitled Records at Audio City before I came into the picture.
    “Nothing happened,” he said, more to himself than me. “When we did this, we could have been anyone. But nothing happened.”
    “You’re not the first.”
    “Remember his voice? The way he grumbled then sounded clear in one breath? He developed that here. Before that, he sounded like a girl all the time. See, he could imitate any voice perfectly. Any accent. He could repeat Russian back to a Russian perfectly and not understand a word of it. But he didn’t want to sound like anyone else. So he was trying to create this new sound during that first session, and he sucked. So bad. All over the place. And we were so fucking high. Really high. Everything sounded like shit. The studio smelled like pot and donuts.”
    He took a break to smile into nothing. He was beautiful. Radiant.
    “What changed?” I asked.
    His eyes moved toward me, and the answer was in his intensity.
    “After you left?”
    “His voice. What changed his voice?”
    “We were laughing at Gary. He was doing an imitation of his kid. She was two and said pickups instead of hiccups and fillops instead of flip flops. And…”
    A smile spread across his face. He pinched the top of his nose between his thumb and first knuckle.
    “Strat couldn’t breathe. We thought he was still laughing but he was choking on a fucking donut.” He took his hands away and looked at the ceiling. “Oh my God, what happened? I remember. I gave him the Heimlich. He spit up this wad of donut that looked like an oyster. We’re laughing. I nearly broke his ribs and we were laughing. But his voice…his esophagus must have gotten shredded or something. Or his throat felt different and knew how to do it. He had a way of hearing that went right to his lungs. He did it once and never forgot it. Fucking gift.”
    He tilted his head back to the box and slid out a set of reels.
    “You miss him. I’m sorry.”
    “I wish I could have stopped him.”
    I didn’t expect him to put his arm around me, but he slid it over my back, up my spine, and over my shoulder, then he pulled me to him. I watched as he took the top off the smaller box. Inside was a clear plastic reel with brown magnetic tape. It didn’t look magical, but to him it was, and we stood in silence for a minute as if praying to it. Then he put the top back on as if shutting out a thought.
    His arm tightened around me until I had to loop my arm around his waist. From there, the rest was a dance. He turned. I turned with him. He bent down. I leaned up.
    He smelled different. He was cologne and tweed. Sharp and clean.
    I turned my head before our lips met, and though that movement came with the knowledge that I didn’t know this man, I considered telling him what had happened to me.

Chapter 18.
    1982 – After the night of the Quaalude
    I didn’t know what to pack, but I knew I had to go. I yanked my smallest Louis Vuitton suitcase from the back of my closet and slapped it open. I didn’t know what to put in it, so it was first-grabbed-first-served.
    Outside, the anniversary party was breaking up. Long black cars headed down the drive, just moving dots of white and red lights. I didn’t have much time.
    I had to get out of there.
    Out of that house and to an abortion clinic. I’d come to terms with being disowned. I wasn’t having this baby. Not now. Not