ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, for a lot of the characters work is a thing that often doesn't happen, so we got to step in Kevin Nelson's Krogering life tonight, and we;ll see some more of Kevin (but not of Kroger) on Monday.
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The Colossus of Rhodes
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
PREPARING TO GO OUT WITH HIS OLD FRIEND, RYAN REMEMBERS THE LAST TIME HE SAW HIM, AND MOMENTS HE'D LIKE TO FORGET
It was right after the whole Beth Nelligant affair had ended. That was the nuttiest experince I’d ever been through. I’d had bad relationships, but not like this. When you’re with someone who’s happy, you’re happy too. But when you’re with someone who is sad, or someone who is a little crazy, then you get a little crazy. Only Beth just wasn’t a little crazy, she was totally crazy. The whole time we were together I felt like a lifeguard. I was exhausted from having to pull her out of the water and toward the end I felt like I was dying, like it was almost over for me too.
Kevin showed up at the house and said, “You need to get that bitch out of your system. Let’s go to the club.”
And then we were at the Blade.
“Stick this under your tongue,” Kevin said, “and be free.” “What the fuck is this?”
“You’ve been in Colorado, and you’ve never seen this?”
“I’ve seen this. I just didn’t know you could get it in Rhodes. How did you get it?”
“Rick.”
I slipped the pill under my tongue.
The music pounded through my body along with the liquor and the drugs. Red and blue light was throbbing through me. Kevin slipped through the dancers with one drink for himself and one for me. He had on his red shirt. I had on my electric blue one. He looked like the man.
“Tonight,” he asserted, slipping me a Hurricane, “we’re both gonna get laid.”
He nudged me, and nodded in the direction of two girls. Hoes.”
Kevin finds hoes better than I do. I don’t know when the hell that happened. Back when we were kids he was just this innocent altar boy. That changed though. There’s a girl on my left and one on my right. One on his left and one on his right. Then there’s only one for each of us and he’s grinding against his. His groin is pressed to hers and her legs are sort of wrapped around his waist. The lights in the club are flashing dully, and as Kevin and his girl bounce up and down it looks like he’s fucking her. I’m making the same moves so I must look the same with this girl. Under my shirt, sweat is going all down my chest. My heart’s beating fast. I slip her some of what I’ve taken. The drugs make me rush out of my body the same time I’m falling back down someplace.
They’re playing over and over again.
After the party
you can’t freak me
Yes I can
Yes I can
what about your girlfriend?
she’s prob’ly with your man...
I’m getting hard grinding against her. I’m getting hard watching Kev and this girl.
Kev’s leading her away with one hand, they’re lacing through dancers. He’s made a gesture to me, we’re all leaving the club. It’s hot. My whole body’s burning. I reach into my back pocket to make sure I’ve got a condom cause I’ve gotta get laid tonight.
Outside it’s cooler, but only a little. This is one of the hottest summers in Rhodes for a long time, and the lake isn’t sending any breeze. In my Cherokee we’re all making out, Kevin and his girl in the back, me and my girl in front.
“Let’s go back to our place,” Kevin’s girl says. It’s about now I realize I don’t know either one of their names, and I don’t want to. We’re speeding back, which means I am speeding back. We run two red lights. There are, thank God, no police. The girls live over on Wilshire, and we make noise coming up the stairs to their apartment. We must sound like a bunch of drunks. One old lady opens her door and glares out, but then she shuts it. I don’t blame her. We probably look like trouble. The girls are TV pretty. We’re all high and have what my aunt calls cheap good lucks. For a girl that’s blond and thin and so I think my girl must have been pretty, but honestly, I don’t remember what she looked like. I just remember one of them opening the door, and us falling all over each other. We made it to the sofa. Behind me I can hear Kevin and his girl laughing in a dumb voice. She’s saying, “Oh, my God, wait till the door’s closed!”
Then the door must be closed, and blood is roaring in my ears and my dick is harder than it’s ever been before and I’m working with this girl’s dress, pulling it up and pulling down my pants, and then my hair is in my face. My heart feels like it’s going to explode, and I feel like if I don’t fuck her right now, this instant, then it’ll all be over for me.
And then I flip her over, part her legs and suddenly I’m fucking her. It’s sweet like getting high. I’m fucking her slow at first, then I can hear from her voice that’s it’s getting harder and harder, more relentless, and I can hear not far off, Kevin doing the same thing. His girl is loud and desperate too.
Now what I remember was that the window in that living room was cracked. The shade wasn’t pulled down, and I could see the sky while I fucked her. It was purple from the lights of Rhodes, and as she shouted under me this purple space went on and on forever. As I breathed in and out I breathed into it, sailed off into it. Was gone.
And then I was back.
Lights are all around, that red and blue light like when you shut your eyes really tight, and my body’s going faster and faster and then I come, and I hear Kevin still fucking his girl. She sounds like she’s hurt. Then she shouts and he comes. He groans. His groan is my groan. He sounds like someone just hurt him.
Me and this girl are curled up and half dressed on her couch, trying to catch our breaths, still high and fucked up. I realize I didn’t use a condom.
Kevin’s laughing from the bedroom, sounding sort of fucked up. I’m dressed (more or less) my shirt hanging out of my pants, belt undone.
“Ryan,” Kevin’s girl is calling. “Ryan!” She’s laughing like she knows me. I get up and cross the living room and the girl I was just with follows me. We go into her bedroom. Kevin is laid out on his back, laughing, still in his red shirt, but his pants are on the floor and he’s in his lucky black briefs. He looks up at me sort of fucked up and says, “This is Cindy.”
Of course it is.
“Ryan” she says again. “Ryan,” like she’s calling me and I’m far off. I push my hair out of my face.
“I’m right here,” I say. I’m still fucked up too, but not like Kevin. I’m not laid back when I’m on drugs. I’m not laid back when I just fucked someone and can’t remember it.
“Ry,” Kevin says to me, “Cindy thinks we should switch off. She thinks I should know what her girl’s like. She wants to know what you’re like.”
I can’t feel my lower lip. For some reason the fact that I can’t feel my lower lip even when I bite down on it factors into my decision.
My girl moves right past me. She climbs onto the bed on top of Kevin. Her skirt is covering his mid section, but a second later I see his underwear come out from under her skirt and then I realize she doesn’t have anything on either because the look on his face and on hers and the way they’re moving tells me he’s fucking her right there in front of me. And then this Cindy leads me to the bed and she begins to pull down my pants and I don’t care, and I push up her skirt and the other girl, the one I was just with, reaches up and turns out the light.
The next morning I’m taking a very long, loud piss in the bowl and I can hear Kevin saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna get out of here, you ready, Ry?” His voice is more uneasy than usual. He sounds as uneasy as I feel.
“Yeah,” I say hitting the flush. I don’t wash my hands. I come out of the rest room.
“Do you have everything?” says one of the girls. We both say yeah.
Kevin sounds a little messed up: “Let’s... hit the road.”
He throws a laugh in.
I drive Kevin back to his apartment. Neither one us says anything. He says, “I’ll call you, alright?”
“Yeah.”
“But not today,” he touches his head. “My head’s killing me... Wild night.”
He gives me that old, fake smile.
And then he’s gone.
He doesn’t call that day, which is just what he said. He doesn’t call for a solid week, and then I think I should. But for some reason I don’t. I put stuff out of my head and remember it another way. By the time summer is over I am sick of Rhodes. It’s been a shitty, shitty summer and this is a shitty, shitty place and it’s back to Colorado and real people who know what it’s like to live outside of the Midwest.
Until now, when I’m getting dressed to see Kevin, looking at myself in the mirror, I have been able to forget all about that. I can’t forget about the last time I saw him, and I start to worry that, even though he was happy to see me today at the store, maybe between then and now he will have remembered what we both chose to forget.
MORE TOMORROW
It was right after the whole Beth Nelligant affair had ended. That was the nuttiest experince I’d ever been through. I’d had bad relationships, but not like this. When you’re with someone who’s happy, you’re happy too. But when you’re with someone who is sad, or someone who is a little crazy, then you get a little crazy. Only Beth just wasn’t a little crazy, she was totally crazy. The whole time we were together I felt like a lifeguard. I was exhausted from having to pull her out of the water and toward the end I felt like I was dying, like it was almost over for me too.
Kevin showed up at the house and said, “You need to get that bitch out of your system. Let’s go to the club.”
And then we were at the Blade.
“Stick this under your tongue,” Kevin said, “and be free.” “What the fuck is this?”
“You’ve been in Colorado, and you’ve never seen this?”
“I’ve seen this. I just didn’t know you could get it in Rhodes. How did you get it?”
“Rick.”
I slipped the pill under my tongue.
The music pounded through my body along with the liquor and the drugs. Red and blue light was throbbing through me. Kevin slipped through the dancers with one drink for himself and one for me. He had on his red shirt. I had on my electric blue one. He looked like the man.
“Tonight,” he asserted, slipping me a Hurricane, “we’re both gonna get laid.”
He nudged me, and nodded in the direction of two girls. Hoes.”
Kevin finds hoes better than I do. I don’t know when the hell that happened. Back when we were kids he was just this innocent altar boy. That changed though. There’s a girl on my left and one on my right. One on his left and one on his right. Then there’s only one for each of us and he’s grinding against his. His groin is pressed to hers and her legs are sort of wrapped around his waist. The lights in the club are flashing dully, and as Kevin and his girl bounce up and down it looks like he’s fucking her. I’m making the same moves so I must look the same with this girl. Under my shirt, sweat is going all down my chest. My heart’s beating fast. I slip her some of what I’ve taken. The drugs make me rush out of my body the same time I’m falling back down someplace.
They’re playing over and over again.
After the party
you can’t freak me
Yes I can
Yes I can
what about your girlfriend?
she’s prob’ly with your man...
I’m getting hard grinding against her. I’m getting hard watching Kev and this girl.
Kev’s leading her away with one hand, they’re lacing through dancers. He’s made a gesture to me, we’re all leaving the club. It’s hot. My whole body’s burning. I reach into my back pocket to make sure I’ve got a condom cause I’ve gotta get laid tonight.
Outside it’s cooler, but only a little. This is one of the hottest summers in Rhodes for a long time, and the lake isn’t sending any breeze. In my Cherokee we’re all making out, Kevin and his girl in the back, me and my girl in front.
“Let’s go back to our place,” Kevin’s girl says. It’s about now I realize I don’t know either one of their names, and I don’t want to. We’re speeding back, which means I am speeding back. We run two red lights. There are, thank God, no police. The girls live over on Wilshire, and we make noise coming up the stairs to their apartment. We must sound like a bunch of drunks. One old lady opens her door and glares out, but then she shuts it. I don’t blame her. We probably look like trouble. The girls are TV pretty. We’re all high and have what my aunt calls cheap good lucks. For a girl that’s blond and thin and so I think my girl must have been pretty, but honestly, I don’t remember what she looked like. I just remember one of them opening the door, and us falling all over each other. We made it to the sofa. Behind me I can hear Kevin and his girl laughing in a dumb voice. She’s saying, “Oh, my God, wait till the door’s closed!”
Then the door must be closed, and blood is roaring in my ears and my dick is harder than it’s ever been before and I’m working with this girl’s dress, pulling it up and pulling down my pants, and then my hair is in my face. My heart feels like it’s going to explode, and I feel like if I don’t fuck her right now, this instant, then it’ll all be over for me.
And then I flip her over, part her legs and suddenly I’m fucking her. It’s sweet like getting high. I’m fucking her slow at first, then I can hear from her voice that’s it’s getting harder and harder, more relentless, and I can hear not far off, Kevin doing the same thing. His girl is loud and desperate too.
Now what I remember was that the window in that living room was cracked. The shade wasn’t pulled down, and I could see the sky while I fucked her. It was purple from the lights of Rhodes, and as she shouted under me this purple space went on and on forever. As I breathed in and out I breathed into it, sailed off into it. Was gone.
And then I was back.
Lights are all around, that red and blue light like when you shut your eyes really tight, and my body’s going faster and faster and then I come, and I hear Kevin still fucking his girl. She sounds like she’s hurt. Then she shouts and he comes. He groans. His groan is my groan. He sounds like someone just hurt him.
Me and this girl are curled up and half dressed on her couch, trying to catch our breaths, still high and fucked up. I realize I didn’t use a condom.
Kevin’s laughing from the bedroom, sounding sort of fucked up. I’m dressed (more or less) my shirt hanging out of my pants, belt undone.
“Ryan,” Kevin’s girl is calling. “Ryan!” She’s laughing like she knows me. I get up and cross the living room and the girl I was just with follows me. We go into her bedroom. Kevin is laid out on his back, laughing, still in his red shirt, but his pants are on the floor and he’s in his lucky black briefs. He looks up at me sort of fucked up and says, “This is Cindy.”
Of course it is.
“Ryan” she says again. “Ryan,” like she’s calling me and I’m far off. I push my hair out of my face.
“I’m right here,” I say. I’m still fucked up too, but not like Kevin. I’m not laid back when I’m on drugs. I’m not laid back when I just fucked someone and can’t remember it.
“Ry,” Kevin says to me, “Cindy thinks we should switch off. She thinks I should know what her girl’s like. She wants to know what you’re like.”
I can’t feel my lower lip. For some reason the fact that I can’t feel my lower lip even when I bite down on it factors into my decision.
My girl moves right past me. She climbs onto the bed on top of Kevin. Her skirt is covering his mid section, but a second later I see his underwear come out from under her skirt and then I realize she doesn’t have anything on either because the look on his face and on hers and the way they’re moving tells me he’s fucking her right there in front of me. And then this Cindy leads me to the bed and she begins to pull down my pants and I don’t care, and I push up her skirt and the other girl, the one I was just with, reaches up and turns out the light.
The next morning I’m taking a very long, loud piss in the bowl and I can hear Kevin saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna get out of here, you ready, Ry?” His voice is more uneasy than usual. He sounds as uneasy as I feel.
“Yeah,” I say hitting the flush. I don’t wash my hands. I come out of the rest room.
“Do you have everything?” says one of the girls. We both say yeah.
Kevin sounds a little messed up: “Let’s... hit the road.”
He throws a laugh in.
I drive Kevin back to his apartment. Neither one us says anything. He says, “I’ll call you, alright?”
“Yeah.”
“But not today,” he touches his head. “My head’s killing me... Wild night.”
He gives me that old, fake smile.
And then he’s gone.
He doesn’t call that day, which is just what he said. He doesn’t call for a solid week, and then I think I should. But for some reason I don’t. I put stuff out of my head and remember it another way. By the time summer is over I am sick of Rhodes. It’s been a shitty, shitty summer and this is a shitty, shitty place and it’s back to Colorado and real people who know what it’s like to live outside of the Midwest.
Until now, when I’m getting dressed to see Kevin, looking at myself in the mirror, I have been able to forget all about that. I can’t forget about the last time I saw him, and I start to worry that, even though he was happy to see me today at the store, maybe between then and now he will have remembered what we both chose to forget.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow Kevin is a bit of a bad friend to Ryan. It seems like he didn't care to stay in touch at all. I guess that is what Kevin is like. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a nice night!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Is Kevin a bad friend? And it is Kevin's fault they didn't stay in touch? Here I am shrugging, but you can't see it.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Maybe they are both at fault.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
2.
I was surprised to see Kevin waiting when I got into the Red Owl. I’d been thinking I was too early, but he’d already gotten a booth and was waving at me. He looked just like he had when he was a little kid, except now he was six foot three and two hundred pounds. He looked older than he had last time I saw him. Around the eyes. And he’d put on weight. Not in a bad way. Just... like me I guess. It’s so funny, I used to think about what it would be like to be a grown up, a real grown up like my Dad one day, and maybe even a few years ago we weren’t there yet. We were tall, but there was still some kid left. Now, when I sit down across from Kevin, even though he’s happy to see me, he doesn’t look like a kid.
“What happened to us?” I say, and from the look on Kevin’s face, which is panicked, maybe he thinks this is an attack.
“I mean,” I say, “what happened to childhood? You know. It’s like everything flew by. It’s like kindergarten was just yesterday.”
Kevin raises an eyebrow.
“Really? To me kindergarten feels like... How long ago was it?”
I think for a moment. We’re both twenty-three. We must have been five when we went to school.
“Eighteen years ago.”
“That’s what it feels like,” he said.
“I took the liberty of ordering drinks for us. You still like Old Milwaukee instead of MGD?”
“I hate MGD.”
“It’s what and what to me,” Kevin confessed. “But I got a pitcher of Milwaukee. And two mugs. They should be coming right up. It’ll just be simpler that way.” He took out his Carltons. “You still smoke?””
I nodded.
“It’ll kill you.” He smiled and took out a Zippo, holding out his pack of cigarettes.
“I got my own.”
“Oh.”
‘But I’ll be glad to have one of yours,” I said and took one.
“And here come the drinks,” Kevin gestured to make way for the waitress who was cute, but too young for us. Or at least I thought she was. And she set down the tray with her pitcher and mugs and Kevin told her thank you very much and winked at her. I could see her warm up and grin. It was probably the most attention she’d had all day. He was always a charmer.
“I’ve looked at the menu and the trout looks nice, but there’s also the ribs. I wish I knew how to make ribs.”
“Ef can make good ribs.”
“Ef Walker?”
“Yeah.”
Well, I’m not Black,” Kevin shrugged.
“White people can make ribs too.”
“Well, I don’t think Jews can,” said Kevin. “Not even non practicing ones who are baptized as Catholics. Oh, look, chicken.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“You know I am,” Kevin said. “Look at this fucking nose.”
Okay, we all knew Kevin was a Jew. Back in school we used to tease him. I don’t know what was funny about it. Or at least we knew that his Dad was a Jew. His Mom was something. But whatever the something was it was Catholic like all of us. Kevin always denied his dad. The more he denied being a Jew the more we teased him, like it was funny. And then one day it wasn’t funny and it didn’t matter. And then everyone forgot. I forgot until just now.
“I didn’t think it was worth bringing up.”
“I always thought it would be neat to go to a synagogue,” I went on. “Isaac Weaver went once before his marriage. Said it was real nice. He still became a Catholic, though… But, maybe that’s what I need. Some religion.”
Religion and sour milk usually gave Kevin the same facial expression, and he said, “No thank you.”
The waitress returned and asked: “Are you ready to order?”
“I’ll have the seared trout,” I told her, “And my friend over here will have the matzoh ball soup.”
The girl looked confused and Kevin frowned at me then told the girl, “Ignore the redheaded comedian. I want the Really Big Burger.”
“All right. Do you want the bleu cheese on top, or inside the burger.”
“How do you prefer it?” he asked, sitting back in the booth to look up at her with an open grin.
“Oh!” She really wasn’t used to getting attention, and she turned red. “I like it on top.”
“That’s how I’ll have it.”
“Fries or onion rings?”
“Onion rings if you please.”
She collected our menus, giving me a shy smile. I gave her a shy smile back and she said, “I’ll be back with that as soon as possible.”
When she was gone Kevin followed her ass with a wistful smile and I said: “Do you want to stay here all night so you can take her home?”
“Funny again, Laujinesse. You know me better than that. She’s a kid.” Then he added. “With a tight round ass and nice, nice tits.
“But a kid,” he insisted.
“You’re such a flirt.”
“I can’t help it.”
“No,” he never had. That girl had been pretty, but shy. There were lots of girls who weren’t just shy, but also not very pretty. Fat girls, pimply girls, awkward girls that were outcast, and Kevin always flirted with them. He was always nice. He always made them feel special. He was so much nicer than me. I remembered what he was like when we were growing up. It took me years to shoot up and be as tall as he was. But when we were really young his height was gawkiness and his nose was as big as it is now. He had those big glasses. His uniform pants never fit. They always stopped almost an inch over his ankles, and I think he has never forgotten the kid he used to be. He just always tries to make people smile, especially people that don’t get much of a smile, and I said:
“No, I know you wouldn’t try anything with her.”
“You wouldn’t either,” Kevin grinned at me, running his finger around the rim of his water glass.
“How do you know?”
“It’s part of your code.”
“My code?”
“We’re not jerks,” Kevin said. “Some guys are. We’ve had girlfriends. Lots of them, and some girls who weren’t girlfriends at all. But they were hoes. We never took advantage of anyone.”
I looked at him.
“Atleast I,” Kevin said, shrugging, “never took advantage of anyone. I don’t know what you did in Colorado.”
“Lots of drugs.” I said. But no, I could see his point.
“I mean, I know you.” Kevin went on. “Beth Nelligant was the closest thing you ever had to messing with damaged goods. And you didn’t use her. You loved her. You were trying to help her out. And then, well, the worst thing I think I’ve ever done was that shit two years ago when we were rolling on EX. Those two girls.”
And there it was. Just like that.
“Yeah,” I said flatly.
There was an uncomfortable silence and Kevin, looking at his beer mug, drummed his fingertips on the polished tabletop.
“That was something that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. I felt sort of breathless, waiting for his next words.
“You know I missed you, Laujinesse?” he said curiously.
“I missed you too,” I said.
He filled my mug and then he filled his own and held it up.
“I want to make a toast to beer.”
“To beer,” I added, and we clinked glasses.
And that was that.
I don’t believe in designated drivers. I don’t mean that I don’t believe they’re a good idea. Just that in the same way some people don’t believe in God because they don’t have any evidence, I don’t believe in designated drivers. I’ve never seen one. I don’t know who’s more fucked up, me or Kevin as we head out of the bar.
“We can stay at my place,” he says. “It’s closer. It’s walking distance.”
“You want to walk?”
“I can’t drive,” Kevin says. “And you better not try to.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen...” I start.
But there’s no use in saying anything. In his own way Kevin has always been by the book.
MORE TOMORROW
I was surprised to see Kevin waiting when I got into the Red Owl. I’d been thinking I was too early, but he’d already gotten a booth and was waving at me. He looked just like he had when he was a little kid, except now he was six foot three and two hundred pounds. He looked older than he had last time I saw him. Around the eyes. And he’d put on weight. Not in a bad way. Just... like me I guess. It’s so funny, I used to think about what it would be like to be a grown up, a real grown up like my Dad one day, and maybe even a few years ago we weren’t there yet. We were tall, but there was still some kid left. Now, when I sit down across from Kevin, even though he’s happy to see me, he doesn’t look like a kid.
“What happened to us?” I say, and from the look on Kevin’s face, which is panicked, maybe he thinks this is an attack.
“I mean,” I say, “what happened to childhood? You know. It’s like everything flew by. It’s like kindergarten was just yesterday.”
Kevin raises an eyebrow.
“Really? To me kindergarten feels like... How long ago was it?”
I think for a moment. We’re both twenty-three. We must have been five when we went to school.
“Eighteen years ago.”
“That’s what it feels like,” he said.
“I took the liberty of ordering drinks for us. You still like Old Milwaukee instead of MGD?”
“I hate MGD.”
“It’s what and what to me,” Kevin confessed. “But I got a pitcher of Milwaukee. And two mugs. They should be coming right up. It’ll just be simpler that way.” He took out his Carltons. “You still smoke?””
I nodded.
“It’ll kill you.” He smiled and took out a Zippo, holding out his pack of cigarettes.
“I got my own.”
“Oh.”
‘But I’ll be glad to have one of yours,” I said and took one.
“And here come the drinks,” Kevin gestured to make way for the waitress who was cute, but too young for us. Or at least I thought she was. And she set down the tray with her pitcher and mugs and Kevin told her thank you very much and winked at her. I could see her warm up and grin. It was probably the most attention she’d had all day. He was always a charmer.
“I’ve looked at the menu and the trout looks nice, but there’s also the ribs. I wish I knew how to make ribs.”
“Ef can make good ribs.”
“Ef Walker?”
“Yeah.”
Well, I’m not Black,” Kevin shrugged.
“White people can make ribs too.”
“Well, I don’t think Jews can,” said Kevin. “Not even non practicing ones who are baptized as Catholics. Oh, look, chicken.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“You know I am,” Kevin said. “Look at this fucking nose.”
Okay, we all knew Kevin was a Jew. Back in school we used to tease him. I don’t know what was funny about it. Or at least we knew that his Dad was a Jew. His Mom was something. But whatever the something was it was Catholic like all of us. Kevin always denied his dad. The more he denied being a Jew the more we teased him, like it was funny. And then one day it wasn’t funny and it didn’t matter. And then everyone forgot. I forgot until just now.
“I didn’t think it was worth bringing up.”
“I always thought it would be neat to go to a synagogue,” I went on. “Isaac Weaver went once before his marriage. Said it was real nice. He still became a Catholic, though… But, maybe that’s what I need. Some religion.”
Religion and sour milk usually gave Kevin the same facial expression, and he said, “No thank you.”
The waitress returned and asked: “Are you ready to order?”
“I’ll have the seared trout,” I told her, “And my friend over here will have the matzoh ball soup.”
The girl looked confused and Kevin frowned at me then told the girl, “Ignore the redheaded comedian. I want the Really Big Burger.”
“All right. Do you want the bleu cheese on top, or inside the burger.”
“How do you prefer it?” he asked, sitting back in the booth to look up at her with an open grin.
“Oh!” She really wasn’t used to getting attention, and she turned red. “I like it on top.”
“That’s how I’ll have it.”
“Fries or onion rings?”
“Onion rings if you please.”
She collected our menus, giving me a shy smile. I gave her a shy smile back and she said, “I’ll be back with that as soon as possible.”
When she was gone Kevin followed her ass with a wistful smile and I said: “Do you want to stay here all night so you can take her home?”
“Funny again, Laujinesse. You know me better than that. She’s a kid.” Then he added. “With a tight round ass and nice, nice tits.
“But a kid,” he insisted.
“You’re such a flirt.”
“I can’t help it.”
“No,” he never had. That girl had been pretty, but shy. There were lots of girls who weren’t just shy, but also not very pretty. Fat girls, pimply girls, awkward girls that were outcast, and Kevin always flirted with them. He was always nice. He always made them feel special. He was so much nicer than me. I remembered what he was like when we were growing up. It took me years to shoot up and be as tall as he was. But when we were really young his height was gawkiness and his nose was as big as it is now. He had those big glasses. His uniform pants never fit. They always stopped almost an inch over his ankles, and I think he has never forgotten the kid he used to be. He just always tries to make people smile, especially people that don’t get much of a smile, and I said:
“No, I know you wouldn’t try anything with her.”
“You wouldn’t either,” Kevin grinned at me, running his finger around the rim of his water glass.
“How do you know?”
“It’s part of your code.”
“My code?”
“We’re not jerks,” Kevin said. “Some guys are. We’ve had girlfriends. Lots of them, and some girls who weren’t girlfriends at all. But they were hoes. We never took advantage of anyone.”
I looked at him.
“Atleast I,” Kevin said, shrugging, “never took advantage of anyone. I don’t know what you did in Colorado.”
“Lots of drugs.” I said. But no, I could see his point.
“I mean, I know you.” Kevin went on. “Beth Nelligant was the closest thing you ever had to messing with damaged goods. And you didn’t use her. You loved her. You were trying to help her out. And then, well, the worst thing I think I’ve ever done was that shit two years ago when we were rolling on EX. Those two girls.”
And there it was. Just like that.
“Yeah,” I said flatly.
There was an uncomfortable silence and Kevin, looking at his beer mug, drummed his fingertips on the polished tabletop.
“That was something that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. I felt sort of breathless, waiting for his next words.
“You know I missed you, Laujinesse?” he said curiously.
“I missed you too,” I said.
He filled my mug and then he filled his own and held it up.
“I want to make a toast to beer.”
“To beer,” I added, and we clinked glasses.
And that was that.
I don’t believe in designated drivers. I don’t mean that I don’t believe they’re a good idea. Just that in the same way some people don’t believe in God because they don’t have any evidence, I don’t believe in designated drivers. I’ve never seen one. I don’t know who’s more fucked up, me or Kevin as we head out of the bar.
“We can stay at my place,” he says. “It’s closer. It’s walking distance.”
“You want to walk?”
“I can’t drive,” Kevin says. “And you better not try to.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen...” I start.
But there’s no use in saying anything. In his own way Kevin has always been by the book.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am glad Kevin and Ryan caught up. I was definitely wrong yesterday, Kevin isn't a bad friend. Great writing and I look forward to reading what happens next tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
And I look forward to showing it,
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
We’re nine years old again in Saint Antonin’s. We’re in our white robes and Scott Graph has gone back to the sacristy. He takes out the communion wine and tips the glass jug to his mouth.
I don’t say anything. Scott’s in eighth grade. It’s Kevin that sticks out his finger and says, “You better not. You better not.”
I don’t remember what Scott did, but in my imagination he listened to Kevin. You couldn’t not listen to Kevin. You couldn’t disobey the awesome power of that finger telling you, “Don’t do that… Or else.”
So we walk down Salem Street, and I’m getting more and more sober and thinking I should call Cile and let her know where I am. Would she like that or would she feel like I was cramping her style? I don’t know.
“Are you still writing?” Kevin says.
“No, that’s Jayson’s thing.”
“It’s not anybody’s thing,” Kevin said. “You used to write all the time. Are you still going to be one? A writer I mean.”
I had completely forgotten it was my thing. I put that out of my mind. I used to do it on the sly. No one would have known about it except Kevin.
“You know what your problem is?” Kevin said.
“You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?
“Goddamn right I am. Your problem,” Kevin said. “Is that your old man filled your fucking head with all of that athlete stuff--”
“I liked football. I liked baseball. I was a kickass basketball player.”
“Why aren’t you in the NBA then?”
“You’re nuts. Everyone can’t be in the NBA.”
“But you could have been,” Kevin said. “You were great.”
“I wasn’t any better than you.”
“I was good,” Kevin allowed. “That was my thing.”
Kevin is jogging up and down the sidewalk, past the tattoo parlor and the All Nite Pizzeria and the drugstore.
“He shoots!” Kevin says as he shoots. “He scores! The crowd is mad!”
Kevin laughs and says, “I was good, yeah. But you were the shit.”
“Then why am I right here?”
Kevin looks at me, completely serious.
“Because that’s not what you wanted to do, Ry.
“I remember when you were a little kid you used to tell all of these fucking stories. You would talk for hours and everyone would sit around and listen to you.”
“Because I wanted attention.”
“Because you were a storyteller,” Kevin said. “Man, you ought to do that again. It was your thing.”
“Was I an asshole when we were kids?”
“That’s out of the blue.”
‘Not really. You just got me thinking about back then. And I was thinking about something my cousin used to say, about how I made fun of her. And I was thinking about... Yeah… I was an asshole.”
“For a bit.” Kevin agreed. “Rough times. Everyone goes through them Here we are!”
Kevin gestured to the apartment building. It was three stories, brick with an enclosed porches on over each other running up to the top.
“This is a nice little place.”
“Close to work and all. Say,” he said, opening the door as we went into the lobby. “What kind of work are you doing?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Telemarketing. It’s the next wave.”
“Are you fucking me?”
We’re heading up the stairs.
“It’s good money. If you do it right.”
“You’re one of those rude assholes who calls people’s houses during dinner and bugs the shit ouf of them?”
In a radio announcer’s voice Kev said, “And you too could be a rude asshole working for Morning Star Telemarketing Agency!”
He jiggled the lock to the apartment and we went in.
“Telemarketing,” I murmured. “It’s a step above working for a collection agency.”
“Yes it is,” said Kevin. “And I’ve done that shit too.”
“What was that like?”
“Soul killing.”
“Do you ever wonder why?” I ask.
“Why what? Why they have collection agencies?”
“No, I mean. Why? Anything?”
“You mean the meaning of life and all that shit?”
“All that shit.”
“I have never known you, Ryan Laujinesse, to care about the meaning of life.”
“I am chocked full of care for the meaning of life.
“It’s like we just go from day to day and.… It doesn’t really matter. I feel like there ought to be more. You know. It’s like, you see bums on the street or you try to save people. I have tried to save people. And now I’m like, ‘Who the fuck did I think I was to try and save anybody?’ I can’t save anyone. I’m lost my damn self.”
“Not lost like some people.”
“No. Agreed. But still, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, where the fuck I’m going.”
“Look,” Kevin said. “It’s not about knowing where you’re going. It’s about being strong enough to put on a good face so that you look like you know where you’re going.”
“What? You think nobody knows. Nobody gets it?”
“No,” Kevin said. “The Dalai Lama probably does. I’m sure there’s some saint out there who does. I’m just saying I never met anybody who did.”
“Nobody?”
“No one.”
“Do you think Beth turned out alright?”
“Beth? Beth Nelligant.”
“Yeah?”
“Why her? That’s amazing. Last time we were together you had just broken up with her. Did you really love her? You still got it for her or something?”
“No, I don’t…got it for her. Just... she was the most lost person I ever met, and I wonder if she got by. You know. If she ended up okay. Her brother’s valedictorian of Saint Jude this year.”
“Well, fuck, didn’t Beth go to Stanford? But she was still nuts.”
I stuck out my lip and nodded. “I’d like to think that Scooter isn’t nuts.”
“Beth Nelligant, lost souls,” Kevin yawned and stood up. “I got something in the liquor cabinet. You need to drink a little more, my friend, before you start thinking too much again.”
Beth is in my dreams tonight. She’s never in my dreams, but then I don’t actually dream that often. Tonight it’s powerful, more real than a lot of what I’ve done in the last few days, and when I wake up there is just a little bit of light coming in through the living room window. For a moment I am back at that place, at that apartment with Kevin two years back. It was summer then too, and Beth was in the air. Nights were short and hot, mornings early. The air conditioner had been on, but now it was off and now it was warm and then it was a jumble of bodies of arms and legs on the bed. Kevin got up to piss. Then I did too. No one was really awake, the drugs were still in us. The sun would not be up for a while and we could regret things later. Now, in the greyness we fumble about for new positions to do new things. We all move into positions with a lust that is tired, done almost more out of duty than anything most people would call passion. Moving our bodies together is like moving heavy furniture, or taking out the trash.
But that was then. Right now I am in Kevin’s apartment, in the present. All of that is in the past. But Beth is not in the past. Beth is real. It is one of those dreams that is so real it hurts. She’s right there in front of me. I’ve told her that I’m going to be firm, that I’m going to be strong. She begins to cry. I tell her “Be strong, Beth. Be strong.” But she can’t be strong. She doesn’t have it in her to be strong. We’re in her house, upstairs in her bedroom. She’s sobbing and I’m telling myself that I hate her. That she’s ugly and weak this way. But the part of me that told Cecile, “This is real love this time. You don’t know what real love is”, the part of me that wanted to be a hero and gets drawn to crying damsels in distress, is getting a hard on right now. She’s crying and she’s holding out her arms to me. I’m on this couch, remembering it right now. It’s like if I open my eyes I’ll see Beth. I can feel her right there. Past my eyelids I can see her reaching out for me, smell that perfume that I never learned the name of, and her shampoo. And she’s reaching out and my boner’s reaching out and I’m saying, “No, no. Not this. This should end…”
But I don’t let it end. Not just then.
Five minutes ago I drove up to say it’s all over. Thirty seconds ago I was telling her how it was all over and we needed to be strong. Now the doors shut and we’re getting undressed. We’re kissing and I’m whispering, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”
The whole time I’m fucking her that’s what I keep whispering over and over again. Her cries change until they’re urgent. She comes first. I remember it all vividly, right here. This morning.
When I finally open my eyes, the sun is coming through the shades and my mouth is half open. My dick is stiff. I realize for the first time:
“She wasn’t the only sick one in that relationship.”
She wasn’t the only one that wanted to drown in comfort for a little while no matter how little the while actually was.
The whole time we moved together on her bed, up until my back arched, my legs convulsed and I shot, I was murmuring, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”
But it wasn’t really Beth I was talking to.
MORE TOMORROW
I don’t say anything. Scott’s in eighth grade. It’s Kevin that sticks out his finger and says, “You better not. You better not.”
I don’t remember what Scott did, but in my imagination he listened to Kevin. You couldn’t not listen to Kevin. You couldn’t disobey the awesome power of that finger telling you, “Don’t do that… Or else.”
So we walk down Salem Street, and I’m getting more and more sober and thinking I should call Cile and let her know where I am. Would she like that or would she feel like I was cramping her style? I don’t know.
“Are you still writing?” Kevin says.
“No, that’s Jayson’s thing.”
“It’s not anybody’s thing,” Kevin said. “You used to write all the time. Are you still going to be one? A writer I mean.”
I had completely forgotten it was my thing. I put that out of my mind. I used to do it on the sly. No one would have known about it except Kevin.
“You know what your problem is?” Kevin said.
“You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?
“Goddamn right I am. Your problem,” Kevin said. “Is that your old man filled your fucking head with all of that athlete stuff--”
“I liked football. I liked baseball. I was a kickass basketball player.”
“Why aren’t you in the NBA then?”
“You’re nuts. Everyone can’t be in the NBA.”
“But you could have been,” Kevin said. “You were great.”
“I wasn’t any better than you.”
“I was good,” Kevin allowed. “That was my thing.”
Kevin is jogging up and down the sidewalk, past the tattoo parlor and the All Nite Pizzeria and the drugstore.
“He shoots!” Kevin says as he shoots. “He scores! The crowd is mad!”
Kevin laughs and says, “I was good, yeah. But you were the shit.”
“Then why am I right here?”
Kevin looks at me, completely serious.
“Because that’s not what you wanted to do, Ry.
“I remember when you were a little kid you used to tell all of these fucking stories. You would talk for hours and everyone would sit around and listen to you.”
“Because I wanted attention.”
“Because you were a storyteller,” Kevin said. “Man, you ought to do that again. It was your thing.”
“Was I an asshole when we were kids?”
“That’s out of the blue.”
‘Not really. You just got me thinking about back then. And I was thinking about something my cousin used to say, about how I made fun of her. And I was thinking about... Yeah… I was an asshole.”
“For a bit.” Kevin agreed. “Rough times. Everyone goes through them Here we are!”
Kevin gestured to the apartment building. It was three stories, brick with an enclosed porches on over each other running up to the top.
“This is a nice little place.”
“Close to work and all. Say,” he said, opening the door as we went into the lobby. “What kind of work are you doing?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Telemarketing. It’s the next wave.”
“Are you fucking me?”
We’re heading up the stairs.
“It’s good money. If you do it right.”
“You’re one of those rude assholes who calls people’s houses during dinner and bugs the shit ouf of them?”
In a radio announcer’s voice Kev said, “And you too could be a rude asshole working for Morning Star Telemarketing Agency!”
He jiggled the lock to the apartment and we went in.
“Telemarketing,” I murmured. “It’s a step above working for a collection agency.”
“Yes it is,” said Kevin. “And I’ve done that shit too.”
“What was that like?”
“Soul killing.”
“Do you ever wonder why?” I ask.
“Why what? Why they have collection agencies?”
“No, I mean. Why? Anything?”
“You mean the meaning of life and all that shit?”
“All that shit.”
“I have never known you, Ryan Laujinesse, to care about the meaning of life.”
“I am chocked full of care for the meaning of life.
“It’s like we just go from day to day and.… It doesn’t really matter. I feel like there ought to be more. You know. It’s like, you see bums on the street or you try to save people. I have tried to save people. And now I’m like, ‘Who the fuck did I think I was to try and save anybody?’ I can’t save anyone. I’m lost my damn self.”
“Not lost like some people.”
“No. Agreed. But still, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, where the fuck I’m going.”
“Look,” Kevin said. “It’s not about knowing where you’re going. It’s about being strong enough to put on a good face so that you look like you know where you’re going.”
“What? You think nobody knows. Nobody gets it?”
“No,” Kevin said. “The Dalai Lama probably does. I’m sure there’s some saint out there who does. I’m just saying I never met anybody who did.”
“Nobody?”
“No one.”
“Do you think Beth turned out alright?”
“Beth? Beth Nelligant.”
“Yeah?”
“Why her? That’s amazing. Last time we were together you had just broken up with her. Did you really love her? You still got it for her or something?”
“No, I don’t…got it for her. Just... she was the most lost person I ever met, and I wonder if she got by. You know. If she ended up okay. Her brother’s valedictorian of Saint Jude this year.”
“Well, fuck, didn’t Beth go to Stanford? But she was still nuts.”
I stuck out my lip and nodded. “I’d like to think that Scooter isn’t nuts.”
“Beth Nelligant, lost souls,” Kevin yawned and stood up. “I got something in the liquor cabinet. You need to drink a little more, my friend, before you start thinking too much again.”
Beth is in my dreams tonight. She’s never in my dreams, but then I don’t actually dream that often. Tonight it’s powerful, more real than a lot of what I’ve done in the last few days, and when I wake up there is just a little bit of light coming in through the living room window. For a moment I am back at that place, at that apartment with Kevin two years back. It was summer then too, and Beth was in the air. Nights were short and hot, mornings early. The air conditioner had been on, but now it was off and now it was warm and then it was a jumble of bodies of arms and legs on the bed. Kevin got up to piss. Then I did too. No one was really awake, the drugs were still in us. The sun would not be up for a while and we could regret things later. Now, in the greyness we fumble about for new positions to do new things. We all move into positions with a lust that is tired, done almost more out of duty than anything most people would call passion. Moving our bodies together is like moving heavy furniture, or taking out the trash.
But that was then. Right now I am in Kevin’s apartment, in the present. All of that is in the past. But Beth is not in the past. Beth is real. It is one of those dreams that is so real it hurts. She’s right there in front of me. I’ve told her that I’m going to be firm, that I’m going to be strong. She begins to cry. I tell her “Be strong, Beth. Be strong.” But she can’t be strong. She doesn’t have it in her to be strong. We’re in her house, upstairs in her bedroom. She’s sobbing and I’m telling myself that I hate her. That she’s ugly and weak this way. But the part of me that told Cecile, “This is real love this time. You don’t know what real love is”, the part of me that wanted to be a hero and gets drawn to crying damsels in distress, is getting a hard on right now. She’s crying and she’s holding out her arms to me. I’m on this couch, remembering it right now. It’s like if I open my eyes I’ll see Beth. I can feel her right there. Past my eyelids I can see her reaching out for me, smell that perfume that I never learned the name of, and her shampoo. And she’s reaching out and my boner’s reaching out and I’m saying, “No, no. Not this. This should end…”
But I don’t let it end. Not just then.
Five minutes ago I drove up to say it’s all over. Thirty seconds ago I was telling her how it was all over and we needed to be strong. Now the doors shut and we’re getting undressed. We’re kissing and I’m whispering, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”
The whole time I’m fucking her that’s what I keep whispering over and over again. Her cries change until they’re urgent. She comes first. I remember it all vividly, right here. This morning.
When I finally open my eyes, the sun is coming through the shades and my mouth is half open. My dick is stiff. I realize for the first time:
“She wasn’t the only sick one in that relationship.”
She wasn’t the only one that wanted to drown in comfort for a little while no matter how little the while actually was.
The whole time we moved together on her bed, up until my back arched, my legs convulsed and I shot, I was murmuring, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.”
But it wasn’t really Beth I was talking to.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am glad Kevin and Ryan can be so honest with each other. I don't know where this story is heading but I am enjoying it! Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Where is heading? To Ryan's memory of his affair with Beth Nelligant, something which happened even before the night of orgy with Kevin. And where is that heading? To the shadoes Ryan was talking about when this portion began, to a place Ryan hates to look back on.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Thanks for clarifying. I was wondering where in the timeline this part of the story was taking place.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
3.
Now I’m well enough to open my eyes. I mean sometimes when your life is so bad, even if you don’t know it’s bad, you really can’t pay attention to what’s going on around you. I start to remember stuff. I start to remember a couple of days after I broke up with Beth... We’re all at the house and Jay looks fucked up. He looks like he’s been doing drugs. I know he hasn’t. He’s just been hanging out with Scooter is all. Maybe Scooter’s crazy. Nelligants... They can do it to you. I remember him looking all dazed and not together cause Jay’s always together. He’s my little brother. But he’s... Not right.
“What’s wrong, Jay?” I say when we get back home.
“What?” He looks confused. “Nothing.”
But I know he’s lying to me. It’s alright. I’d lie to him too. After a certain age that’s all you do. What does Jay know about me and Beth? Or me and anyone? There is so much I never told him that I would have liked to have passed on. I never think about it. I’m thinking about it now. What does my little brother think when he sees me?
But how did Beth start? Well, There was a beach party when I got back from Colorado that summer when things went to shit. Anyone watching us would think that this is what we always do, go to beach parties and play volleyball. But this is Ohio, and it’s Memorial Day weekend. Everyone here right now has troubles back at home. These are all people I went to school with. Some of them still look good, but a lot of us look like shadows of something that looked good. You know? If you’ve ever been to Abercrombie you go into the store and you see all the hot people on posters, on the walls, and then you see the sales clerks, and they’re hot too. But then you realize that some of them have eyes that are too close together, or they’re a little thick in the middle or something. They aren’t spectacular, they’re just impersonating the people on the posters. That’s what we’re all like. If you got to close you would see that Shawn Mc.Govern has a pot belly now and that Jeff Kerrick is going bald. You’d see that Suzie probably won’t be able to wear that bikini next summer and probably shouldn’t be wearing it now. That’s the bad thing about alcohol. As the night draws on and the light of the sun goes away it’s replaced not just by the light of fire, but by that other light that comes when you think too long because your mind’s submerged in booze and can’t come back up.
That’s what booze does. It’s the one good thing. It stops you from being able to pretend. Your brain’s just too fucking tired and lazy and stupid to make things better than they are.
But the firelight is getting sadder and sadder. Dan takes out his guitar. He’s singing in a failed rock band. They keep on saying they’re going somewhere but they’ve been going somewhere about three years. Kevin just ran up and tried to get me involved in a game of beach volleyball. But I’ve played enough of it, and was never really that good anyway. I’m only in a Speedo, and I thought it would have gotten colder to me by now, that I should find my clothes, but even by the lake it’s still hot. This is an unusually hot May. I see her walking a little ahead of me.
“Beth?”
She turns around.
“Ryan? Ryan Laujinesse!”
“Yeah.”
“Look at you,” she says, putting her hands to her mouth and laughing. She looks so surprised. “I thought you would have left by now.”
I bite my tongue, which is too honest, and which was about to say, “I didn’t even know you were here.”
“You look great,” she says.
I don’t know what to say. I’m over six feet and large so the Speedo will either look ridiculous or like I’m almost naked. I’m glad she thinks it looks great. I tell her she looks great too.
` “I’m just walking,” she says.
“I was just walking too. We could just walk together.”
“I’d like that.”
We are walking further away from the sound of Rusted Root on the little stereo Dan brought, and the bonfire that’s dying down. The lake is still warm, but it smells a little funny and the rocks are sometimes sharp on your feet.
“You’ve got to be careful about that,” I tell Beth as we walk along the pebbles, the drifting plants and hidden tangles of the end of the beach.
“I like it,” Beth said. “I like the little sharp rocks in my feet.”
“You’re at Stanford, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How is it?”
“It’s alright,” she said. “At least it’s not going to City College.”
“Yeah,” I’m saying yeah a lot.
“And you’re in Colorado.”
“Right.”
“I only went to Colorado once. To ski. I bet it’s nice.”
“Well, it is. But there’s a lot of work too.”
I’m glad to be talking instead of saying yeah and un huh and right, right. “And we don’t; get to ski that much.” I crack a smile. “The only times when we’d be skiing that much I’m either here for break or I’m in school studying.”
“You still play basketball?”
“I didn’t know you knew I played basketball.”
“Yes,” says Beth. “Everybody knew.”
“Well, not next year I won’t. I’m done with it. I really want to concentrate on my degree.”
“What are you doing?”
“English and Engineering.”
Beth laughs, “Now that is odd.”
“Well, I guess.”
“I’m a political science major,” she says. “If I play my cards right I can work in California for a senator or something. Actually, it doesn’t matter where I work. I want to work for a senator.”
“I didn’t know you were political.”
“I didn’t know either,” she admits. “It just sort of crept up on me.”
We keep walking for a while and she says, “I didn’t know you liked to read and write and all that.”
We sit down on a wet rock. It’s sort of damp and mildewy. We’re under a pier.
“Yeah,” I say. “All that.”
Then, “You’re so together. I don’t know what to do. I’m so not together. You know just what you’re doing.”
Beth purses her lips and shakes her head. Her hair is curly and she looks old, like she smokes, her face is sort of lined. All of these girls, all of these girls we grew up with look so old. Maybe I look old too.
“I don’t know anything,” she says. There is a huge wave that breaks on the sand then pulls back into the water. “I just hope. I just hope that I know what the hell I’m doing and don’t screw up too bad.”
I kiss her suddenly.
She looks at me.
“You still look good,” she says. “Even if no one else does. You’re still hot.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I wish I was,” she says.
“I wish I had a cigarette.”
“Whatever happened to Cecile?”
“Cile Turner?” I shrug. “She’s going to Saint Clare’s with my cousin.”
“Jinny, yeah,” Beth says negligently. “You used to have something with Cecile.”
“That ended a long time ago.”
“Oh,” says Beth.
She says, “I’m on the pill.”
We’re both quiet, and then she says. “Right there. Between those two docks.” There’s nothing but some branches over head and the water coming in a little bit.
I nod. I kiss her again. When I get up I’m already stiff. Pushing my hands into her shoulders to guide her along we go into the little damp place between the docks. It smells of mildew and seaweed. There is a long spot of soft wet sand. She unhooks her top and I pull down my Speedo.
“My God,” she murmurs. She sounds tired more than amazed as she looks at me again, and then starts pulling down her bottoms.
We embrace.
When it’s over we separate a little. I can feel myself still dripping a little. We lay on the sand like salmon and she says, “I don’t want to go back to them. I don’t even know why I came.”
“I can’t hear them. Maybe they’re gone.”
“Maybe they’re looking for us,” says Beth. “Looking for you,” she amends.
Even then she knew, or thought she knew, that no one would be looking for her.
“I could take you home,” I say.
“I’d like that.”
“I need to get a little clean.”
I go into the water with my Speedo in my hands until I am up to my waist and then dive between two of the poles that hold up the pier and swim until I’m out in water. Not far out, because I can’t swim that well. I pull on my Speedo under the water and Beth is in the water too.
“Let’s go home,” she says. “You can take me home. I’d like that. I need to get away from here.”
But we still have to go back to the beach, back to the party to get our clothes.
We can smell the marijuana before we get to the bonfire. The party’s died down. Joan Deiter is passing a joint to Kevin who looks at me at the same time Dan, who’s playing his guitar does. They know me. They know Beth. We’ve just come back from some unknown place. Kevin leers at me.
“What?” I say. He laughs low and chokes on his smoke as I pull back on my cargo shorts and look for my tee shirt and sandals.
“You kids heading out?” Joan says. Her voice is lazy with weed. It must be the weed. She hasn’t been laid back for years.
“Yeah. I’m going to take Beth home,” I say, and as soon as I say it know how it sounds.
She lives south of where Isaac lives, west of my family’s neighborhood. All the lights are out when we get to her house.
“I like you, Ryan,” she says.
“I like you too. You’re easy to be with.”
“You could stay with me tonight,” she says. “If you park on the corner so my parents don’t wonder whose car this is.”
My relationship with Cecile had reached an all time frustration high. Even though I’d just had sex with this girl less than an hour ago it was rushed and cramped on a beach so I’m ready to try it out again in a proper place, the right way. I’m ready to forget Cecile and get to know more about Beth Nelligant. Beth, who is so easy to be with and inside of and move with and take care of.
I pull out of my parking spot in front of the Nelligants, and U-turn to the beginning of the block. As I turn the car off I kiss her and then press her hand in mine.
I get out of the car, round it for her door, let her out and wait for her to come down to me. I close the door and we head down the quiet block to her house.
A LITTLE BIT MORE TOMORROW
Now I’m well enough to open my eyes. I mean sometimes when your life is so bad, even if you don’t know it’s bad, you really can’t pay attention to what’s going on around you. I start to remember stuff. I start to remember a couple of days after I broke up with Beth... We’re all at the house and Jay looks fucked up. He looks like he’s been doing drugs. I know he hasn’t. He’s just been hanging out with Scooter is all. Maybe Scooter’s crazy. Nelligants... They can do it to you. I remember him looking all dazed and not together cause Jay’s always together. He’s my little brother. But he’s... Not right.
“What’s wrong, Jay?” I say when we get back home.
“What?” He looks confused. “Nothing.”
But I know he’s lying to me. It’s alright. I’d lie to him too. After a certain age that’s all you do. What does Jay know about me and Beth? Or me and anyone? There is so much I never told him that I would have liked to have passed on. I never think about it. I’m thinking about it now. What does my little brother think when he sees me?
But how did Beth start? Well, There was a beach party when I got back from Colorado that summer when things went to shit. Anyone watching us would think that this is what we always do, go to beach parties and play volleyball. But this is Ohio, and it’s Memorial Day weekend. Everyone here right now has troubles back at home. These are all people I went to school with. Some of them still look good, but a lot of us look like shadows of something that looked good. You know? If you’ve ever been to Abercrombie you go into the store and you see all the hot people on posters, on the walls, and then you see the sales clerks, and they’re hot too. But then you realize that some of them have eyes that are too close together, or they’re a little thick in the middle or something. They aren’t spectacular, they’re just impersonating the people on the posters. That’s what we’re all like. If you got to close you would see that Shawn Mc.Govern has a pot belly now and that Jeff Kerrick is going bald. You’d see that Suzie probably won’t be able to wear that bikini next summer and probably shouldn’t be wearing it now. That’s the bad thing about alcohol. As the night draws on and the light of the sun goes away it’s replaced not just by the light of fire, but by that other light that comes when you think too long because your mind’s submerged in booze and can’t come back up.
That’s what booze does. It’s the one good thing. It stops you from being able to pretend. Your brain’s just too fucking tired and lazy and stupid to make things better than they are.
But the firelight is getting sadder and sadder. Dan takes out his guitar. He’s singing in a failed rock band. They keep on saying they’re going somewhere but they’ve been going somewhere about three years. Kevin just ran up and tried to get me involved in a game of beach volleyball. But I’ve played enough of it, and was never really that good anyway. I’m only in a Speedo, and I thought it would have gotten colder to me by now, that I should find my clothes, but even by the lake it’s still hot. This is an unusually hot May. I see her walking a little ahead of me.
“Beth?”
She turns around.
“Ryan? Ryan Laujinesse!”
“Yeah.”
“Look at you,” she says, putting her hands to her mouth and laughing. She looks so surprised. “I thought you would have left by now.”
I bite my tongue, which is too honest, and which was about to say, “I didn’t even know you were here.”
“You look great,” she says.
I don’t know what to say. I’m over six feet and large so the Speedo will either look ridiculous or like I’m almost naked. I’m glad she thinks it looks great. I tell her she looks great too.
` “I’m just walking,” she says.
“I was just walking too. We could just walk together.”
“I’d like that.”
We are walking further away from the sound of Rusted Root on the little stereo Dan brought, and the bonfire that’s dying down. The lake is still warm, but it smells a little funny and the rocks are sometimes sharp on your feet.
“You’ve got to be careful about that,” I tell Beth as we walk along the pebbles, the drifting plants and hidden tangles of the end of the beach.
“I like it,” Beth said. “I like the little sharp rocks in my feet.”
“You’re at Stanford, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How is it?”
“It’s alright,” she said. “At least it’s not going to City College.”
“Yeah,” I’m saying yeah a lot.
“And you’re in Colorado.”
“Right.”
“I only went to Colorado once. To ski. I bet it’s nice.”
“Well, it is. But there’s a lot of work too.”
I’m glad to be talking instead of saying yeah and un huh and right, right. “And we don’t; get to ski that much.” I crack a smile. “The only times when we’d be skiing that much I’m either here for break or I’m in school studying.”
“You still play basketball?”
“I didn’t know you knew I played basketball.”
“Yes,” says Beth. “Everybody knew.”
“Well, not next year I won’t. I’m done with it. I really want to concentrate on my degree.”
“What are you doing?”
“English and Engineering.”
Beth laughs, “Now that is odd.”
“Well, I guess.”
“I’m a political science major,” she says. “If I play my cards right I can work in California for a senator or something. Actually, it doesn’t matter where I work. I want to work for a senator.”
“I didn’t know you were political.”
“I didn’t know either,” she admits. “It just sort of crept up on me.”
We keep walking for a while and she says, “I didn’t know you liked to read and write and all that.”
We sit down on a wet rock. It’s sort of damp and mildewy. We’re under a pier.
“Yeah,” I say. “All that.”
Then, “You’re so together. I don’t know what to do. I’m so not together. You know just what you’re doing.”
Beth purses her lips and shakes her head. Her hair is curly and she looks old, like she smokes, her face is sort of lined. All of these girls, all of these girls we grew up with look so old. Maybe I look old too.
“I don’t know anything,” she says. There is a huge wave that breaks on the sand then pulls back into the water. “I just hope. I just hope that I know what the hell I’m doing and don’t screw up too bad.”
I kiss her suddenly.
She looks at me.
“You still look good,” she says. “Even if no one else does. You’re still hot.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I wish I was,” she says.
“I wish I had a cigarette.”
“Whatever happened to Cecile?”
“Cile Turner?” I shrug. “She’s going to Saint Clare’s with my cousin.”
“Jinny, yeah,” Beth says negligently. “You used to have something with Cecile.”
“That ended a long time ago.”
“Oh,” says Beth.
She says, “I’m on the pill.”
We’re both quiet, and then she says. “Right there. Between those two docks.” There’s nothing but some branches over head and the water coming in a little bit.
I nod. I kiss her again. When I get up I’m already stiff. Pushing my hands into her shoulders to guide her along we go into the little damp place between the docks. It smells of mildew and seaweed. There is a long spot of soft wet sand. She unhooks her top and I pull down my Speedo.
“My God,” she murmurs. She sounds tired more than amazed as she looks at me again, and then starts pulling down her bottoms.
We embrace.
When it’s over we separate a little. I can feel myself still dripping a little. We lay on the sand like salmon and she says, “I don’t want to go back to them. I don’t even know why I came.”
“I can’t hear them. Maybe they’re gone.”
“Maybe they’re looking for us,” says Beth. “Looking for you,” she amends.
Even then she knew, or thought she knew, that no one would be looking for her.
“I could take you home,” I say.
“I’d like that.”
“I need to get a little clean.”
I go into the water with my Speedo in my hands until I am up to my waist and then dive between two of the poles that hold up the pier and swim until I’m out in water. Not far out, because I can’t swim that well. I pull on my Speedo under the water and Beth is in the water too.
“Let’s go home,” she says. “You can take me home. I’d like that. I need to get away from here.”
But we still have to go back to the beach, back to the party to get our clothes.
We can smell the marijuana before we get to the bonfire. The party’s died down. Joan Deiter is passing a joint to Kevin who looks at me at the same time Dan, who’s playing his guitar does. They know me. They know Beth. We’ve just come back from some unknown place. Kevin leers at me.
“What?” I say. He laughs low and chokes on his smoke as I pull back on my cargo shorts and look for my tee shirt and sandals.
“You kids heading out?” Joan says. Her voice is lazy with weed. It must be the weed. She hasn’t been laid back for years.
“Yeah. I’m going to take Beth home,” I say, and as soon as I say it know how it sounds.
She lives south of where Isaac lives, west of my family’s neighborhood. All the lights are out when we get to her house.
“I like you, Ryan,” she says.
“I like you too. You’re easy to be with.”
“You could stay with me tonight,” she says. “If you park on the corner so my parents don’t wonder whose car this is.”
My relationship with Cecile had reached an all time frustration high. Even though I’d just had sex with this girl less than an hour ago it was rushed and cramped on a beach so I’m ready to try it out again in a proper place, the right way. I’m ready to forget Cecile and get to know more about Beth Nelligant. Beth, who is so easy to be with and inside of and move with and take care of.
I pull out of my parking spot in front of the Nelligants, and U-turn to the beginning of the block. As I turn the car off I kiss her and then press her hand in mine.
I get out of the car, round it for her door, let her out and wait for her to come down to me. I close the door and we head down the quiet block to her house.
A LITTLE BIT MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am enjoying hearing about Ryan's past with Beth. Don't really have much else to say other then I am greatly enjoying this story! Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! I know I am a bit early but its Friday here so I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I am glad you are enjoying, and half asleep on my sofa.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
LOTS OF WEEKEND ANGUISH
“HELLO! GOOD EVENING! DO you have a moment to hear about a special offer from Cozumel Cruises, the Happy Cruise People?”
“No, not really. We’re about to eat dinner.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, Ma’am. I understand how that can be.”
“I’m sure you do, since you’re probably human, and humans probably eat. You guys are human, aren’t you?”
Ryan adds another laugh and begins to finger the knot in his tie.
“Yes, ma’am. We are human at Cozumel Cruises.”
But he doesn’t sound human to himself. He’s talking in a game show host’s voice.
“We were here to offer a free cruise to Letitia Gaynor and four of her friends if she was interested.”
“This involves buying something, doesn’t it?”
“No, Ma’am, not at all. Cozumel Cruises wants to offer you a free get away. You work hard all day and now it’s time to play.”
“Actually you want to offer Letitia Gaynor a cruise.”
“You wouldn’t be Letitia Gaynor?”
“I sure in the hell wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be Letitia Gaynor for the whole goddamned world. She’s been dead for the last three months.”
“Oh,” Ryan felt stupid and kept opening and closing his mouth at the station where he sat with the phone cradled in the crook of his shoulder. What was he supposed to do now?
“I’m so sorry...”
“Don’t be.”
“Was she related?”
“She was my mother.”
“Oh, I really am sorry.”
“But she was a bitch. She used to beat me with a frying pan and everything.”
Ryan just sat there. He had put on his best cologne and now all he could smell was sweat. After six hours of this he had damp armpits and a damp ass to show for it all.
“Well, Ms. Gaynor, you would be the younger Ms. Gaynor?”
“I am a Miss Gaynor.”
“Maybe you’d like a gettaway cruise.”
“You know, my dinner really is getting cold.”
“Uh... yes.” Ryan said. “Well, thank you for your time.”
“Um hum.”
And that was that.
“Hello!”
“Hello?”
“Hi, if you’re Rolf Goodson, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about your pre-approved Visa Platinum card with a zero percent rate of interest and increased spending power--”
“I’m not--”
“If you act now, you could even be approved for the Visa Platinum and our new sweepstakes for a Jeep Cherokee, one of the hottest selling items on—”
“Hello? Is this a recorded message?”
“No,” Ryan said, sounding breathless and giddy.
“I’m not interested.”
“You’re not interested in the new Visa Platinum card with zero percent—”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to know why I’m not interested?”
“Uh...” Ryan debated answering this for a second and said: “Sure. I mean, yes. I… maybe I could change your mind.”
“Because the last time one of you people called up this house trying to sell me one I was a Freshmen in college, and I got one of these damn cards and you know what happened? I spent thirty dollars on it. Thirty. But I forgot about it, as college kids will, and before I knew it collection agencies were calling my house. Those motherfuckers!”
“Oh, yeah,” Ryan chimed in trying to sound at one with the man’s anger.
“And I was over four hundred dollars in debt! And someone, someone just like you—Some white man all nice and pleasant called up trying to be my friend talking about how I needed to pay this moment right now and he could help me. Oh, but I knew the bitch was only trying to get my money cause he was on commision and wouldn’t get paid unless he rung the shit out of me. Well, he went to bed hungry that night. But I didn’t.”
“Oh, sir,” Ryan said. “Mr Goodson, I’m not a collection agency. I wouldn’t-”
“But you know what,” Rolf Goodson continued, “You can go to bed hungry too!”
And he slammed the phone down.
When the busy signal started scratching in Ryan’s ear he became newly aware of the damp chair he’d been sitting in for hours in this stuffy room. His eyes stung and his hands clenched and unclenched. He buried his face in his hands and growled, “Fuck!”
He looked around. There were only three other people in the room. Kevin was in the next one. Everyone was in his own booth doing his own thing. Ryan blew out his cheeks and shook his head.
Fuck fuck fuck I hate this place!
He looked at the call list.
Thirty more to go.
When Ryan entered the kitchen above the bookstore, Kevin beside him, everyone looked up in mild surprise.
“Kevin Nelson?” Efrem said his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to see.
“Ef.” said Kevin. “Isaac, Jinny. It’s just like school all over again.”
“Well,” Cecile shrugged. Then she said, “How was it at the telemarketing place?”
“I hate that place,” Ryan declared. “And the people I called were so rude. But who could blame them? I’d be rude too.”
“I always try to be nice to Telemarketers,” Efrem said. “I think you’d have to be really low on the wheel of life to resort to it. So I try to be as decent as possible.”
“Thanks, Ef,” Ryan pulled a sour face.
“Well, now that didn’t come out right, did it?” Efrem murmured to Isaac.
“Do you buy anything from the Telemarketers?” Kevin asked him.
“Hell, no,” Efrem said. “And I tell the bill collectors that I’m dead. Not that I have bill collectors anymore. Thank God. Bastards at the collection agency used to call and call. I was afraid I was going to jail for a while.”
Ryan opened up Isaac’s refrigerator, asking, “Do you mind?”
“Does it matter?”
“If you said no,” Ryan told him, “I would be obliged to shut it and respect your wishes.”
“You hear that, Ef?” Isaac commented. “He would actually respect my wishes.”
Efrem took the eclair off of Isaac’s plate and bit into it. “I’m your best friend. I don’t have to respect your wishes.”
“Of course the worst part of telemarketing,” Kevin said, “is you only get paid according to how many people you convince to buy your product.”
“What?” Ryan head shot up so fast from the refrigerator, that he nearly hit his head on the freezer door.
Cecile looked at Ryan’s desolate expression and said, “Maybe you should get out of this line of work, baby.”
“You know I was thinking,” Jinny said, “whenever I go to the library there are all of these interesting people working there. I always wonder where they all come from. And it seems... not low stress… But sort of unhurried and meaningful. All at the same time.”
“To work in a library?” Cecile said.
“I could work in a library,” Ryan said.
“You could,” Efrem said in a voice that implied, “but you shouldn’t.”
“You always liked the library,” Isaac turned to Efrem.
“That’s right. But I worked in one once and I discovered there’s a difference between coming for an hour or two and having free run of the place and having to stay for eight hour shifts behind a counter. A big difference. You might not want to do that, Ryan.”
“What might I want to do, then?”
“You might want to get the hell out of town for a while,” Efrem told him. “Perspective and everything.”
“I don’t know—” Ryan began and then said, “Christ, I’m whining now!”
Kevin said, “You keep on whining, man,” as if he we were saying, ‘You keep on winning this basketball game.’ “But I gotta go do some grocery shopping for my mom. Are you coming to work tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Ryan said at the same time Cecile said, “No.”
Ryan looked at Cecile, who shrugged and sank down in her chair.
“Yes,” Ryan repeated.
“I’ll see you then.”
When Kevin was gone, Ryan said, “See that? Shit! Kevin doesn’t whine about life. Why can’t I be like that?”
Efrem took out a hand and began to numerate. “Kevin has never one: left Rhodes, two: gone to college or three: had a job over minimum wage. I’m not saying anything’s wrong with that. But I am saying there’s nothing right with it. Don’t be upset because you question things and want a little bit more out of life than a bagboy.”
“I wish I knew what the little bit more was.”
Efrem frowned and said, “I think we all do. But maybe that’s not the point.”
“What’s not the point?”
“To know,” said Efrem. “At least not to know right away. You know?”
He got up. “Are we all ready for the movie?”
“I’m ready for the movie,” Isaac stood up
“I’ve got the popcorn bags and the pop stashed away in my purse,” Jinny said.
“I think I’m just gonna head for home,” Ryan said.
“I think I’ll head for home with Ryan,” Cecile told them.
“Well,” Isaac decided, “at least we can all walk out of the kitchen together.”
“At least,” said Efrem.
“WELL, I GUESS THE PUSSY must have been EXQUISITE cause it’s love now.”
“Excuse me?” Ryan turned to her, his voice cold.
They were in Jinny’s house, in her kitchen. She had that tight feeling that comes when a storm’s about to blow and there isn’t a damn thing to be done about it.
“Are you deaf?’ Cecile asked him. “Have I become suddenly incoherent?”
When Ryan did not answer, she repeated, dropping each word on the floor. “I said the pussy... must... have... been... EXQUISITE.”
“I’m going to ignore that,” Ryan said.
“You might not say anything about what I just said. But I know you won’t ignore it,” Cecile told him. “Hell, you say she went to Saint Antonin’s. I don’t even remember the bitch.”
“She remembers you,” Ryan said.
“She should, I was the only Black girl in my class. I was also the cutest in my year,” she turned to Jinny. “Except for you.”
“I know what I looked like back then,” Jinny said.
“And I would prefer if you used her name,” Ryan said.
“Well, I don’t remember Betsy.”
“Beth.”
“Whatever.”
“She’s blond,” Ryan snapped. “With bright blue eyes.”
“Let me guess?” said Cecile, pleasantly. “Is she white too?”
Ryan glared at her.
“You know what I don’t understand about white folks?” Cecile said loudly. “They all get crazy over some blond hair and blue eyes. Like Hitler. Don’t forget Hitler. No, here this bitch is, who I have NEVER seen, and Ryan fucks her once on a beach and all of a sudden—”
Ryan’s hand bammed down on the table and he shouted, “SHE IS NOT A BITCH!!!”
Ryan’s face was purple. He was so loud that Anne came from upstairs to see what the hell had happened. Jinny was terrified.
Cecile didn’t bat an eyelash. Or at least that’s all she did.
She got up, went to the kitchen door, walked out and then said, “Ryan?”
He glared at her.
“Yes, she is.”
And then Cecile was gone.
Before he could lunge after her, Jinny said, “Ryan, calm down.”
“She doesn’t understand,” Ryan said. “She’s got all of her toys. All of her Chucks and Tommys and Cecile doesn’t know a damn thing about real love. She doesn’t know how I feel about Beth. She’s never loved anyone.”
“Cecile loves me. She loves Efrem.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Ryan said, miserable. “Guys. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be serious for a guy.”
“She loved you,” Jinny told him blankly.
Ryan looked at her.
“She loved you, Ryan. You know she did. And you went off to Colorado, and you broke things off with her. I know you like this Beth girl, and that’s nice. But you’ve got to see it from Cile’s point. You’ve got to.”
SLEEPILY SHE SAID FROM THE BED, “Honey, what are you doing?”
“Nothing. Really. Go back to sleep.”
Cecile ignored him and crawled out of the bedpile to the pool of light made by the desk lamp. Ryan was typing.
“I can’t sleep now. What? Are you writing?”
“I’m trying,” Ryan said, hitting the save button and turning to her
“Ooh,” she gave him a delighted smile. “You’re going to be a big famous writer after all.”
“I don’t even know if I’m going to be a writer, let alone a big famous one,” he said.
She sat on his lap
“I haven’t gotten fat have I?” she said.
“What?”
“I mean, I’m not too heavy to sit on your lap?”
“No, Cile. You never have been.”
“Good.”
“And besides, if I said any different you’d wait till I fell asleep, slash all my tires and call Efrem to take you home.”
“No I wouldn’t,” she muttered, pressing her head into his shoulder. But they both knew she was lying.
“What’s it about?” she murmured.
“I dunno,” Ryan sounded stupid to himself. “There’s this girl, and she’s just come out of a crazy house. She’s come nght back to live with her sister. It’s got the working title ‘When A Bitch Comes Home’. ”
Cecile threw back her head and cackled.
She laughed and laughed until all Ryan could do was smile brightly at her. She smelled of musk and a little bit of that perfume she always wore, and the coconut oil she rubbed into her braids, into the those long, impossibly thin tracks of braid.
When she’d stopped laughing, Cecile said, “I think I’d like the title character.”
“She reminds me a lot of you.”
Cecile stopped, cocked her head and looked at him. He looked at her. He cracked a smile.
“Oh, you’ll pay For that,” Cecile told him.
“I’m sure,” he told her.
MORE AFTER SATURDAY
“HELLO! GOOD EVENING! DO you have a moment to hear about a special offer from Cozumel Cruises, the Happy Cruise People?”
“No, not really. We’re about to eat dinner.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, Ma’am. I understand how that can be.”
“I’m sure you do, since you’re probably human, and humans probably eat. You guys are human, aren’t you?”
Ryan adds another laugh and begins to finger the knot in his tie.
“Yes, ma’am. We are human at Cozumel Cruises.”
But he doesn’t sound human to himself. He’s talking in a game show host’s voice.
“We were here to offer a free cruise to Letitia Gaynor and four of her friends if she was interested.”
“This involves buying something, doesn’t it?”
“No, Ma’am, not at all. Cozumel Cruises wants to offer you a free get away. You work hard all day and now it’s time to play.”
“Actually you want to offer Letitia Gaynor a cruise.”
“You wouldn’t be Letitia Gaynor?”
“I sure in the hell wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be Letitia Gaynor for the whole goddamned world. She’s been dead for the last three months.”
“Oh,” Ryan felt stupid and kept opening and closing his mouth at the station where he sat with the phone cradled in the crook of his shoulder. What was he supposed to do now?
“I’m so sorry...”
“Don’t be.”
“Was she related?”
“She was my mother.”
“Oh, I really am sorry.”
“But she was a bitch. She used to beat me with a frying pan and everything.”
Ryan just sat there. He had put on his best cologne and now all he could smell was sweat. After six hours of this he had damp armpits and a damp ass to show for it all.
“Well, Ms. Gaynor, you would be the younger Ms. Gaynor?”
“I am a Miss Gaynor.”
“Maybe you’d like a gettaway cruise.”
“You know, my dinner really is getting cold.”
“Uh... yes.” Ryan said. “Well, thank you for your time.”
“Um hum.”
And that was that.
“Hello!”
“Hello?”
“Hi, if you’re Rolf Goodson, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about your pre-approved Visa Platinum card with a zero percent rate of interest and increased spending power--”
“I’m not--”
“If you act now, you could even be approved for the Visa Platinum and our new sweepstakes for a Jeep Cherokee, one of the hottest selling items on—”
“Hello? Is this a recorded message?”
“No,” Ryan said, sounding breathless and giddy.
“I’m not interested.”
“You’re not interested in the new Visa Platinum card with zero percent—”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to know why I’m not interested?”
“Uh...” Ryan debated answering this for a second and said: “Sure. I mean, yes. I… maybe I could change your mind.”
“Because the last time one of you people called up this house trying to sell me one I was a Freshmen in college, and I got one of these damn cards and you know what happened? I spent thirty dollars on it. Thirty. But I forgot about it, as college kids will, and before I knew it collection agencies were calling my house. Those motherfuckers!”
“Oh, yeah,” Ryan chimed in trying to sound at one with the man’s anger.
“And I was over four hundred dollars in debt! And someone, someone just like you—Some white man all nice and pleasant called up trying to be my friend talking about how I needed to pay this moment right now and he could help me. Oh, but I knew the bitch was only trying to get my money cause he was on commision and wouldn’t get paid unless he rung the shit out of me. Well, he went to bed hungry that night. But I didn’t.”
“Oh, sir,” Ryan said. “Mr Goodson, I’m not a collection agency. I wouldn’t-”
“But you know what,” Rolf Goodson continued, “You can go to bed hungry too!”
And he slammed the phone down.
When the busy signal started scratching in Ryan’s ear he became newly aware of the damp chair he’d been sitting in for hours in this stuffy room. His eyes stung and his hands clenched and unclenched. He buried his face in his hands and growled, “Fuck!”
He looked around. There were only three other people in the room. Kevin was in the next one. Everyone was in his own booth doing his own thing. Ryan blew out his cheeks and shook his head.
Fuck fuck fuck I hate this place!
He looked at the call list.
Thirty more to go.
When Ryan entered the kitchen above the bookstore, Kevin beside him, everyone looked up in mild surprise.
“Kevin Nelson?” Efrem said his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to see.
“Ef.” said Kevin. “Isaac, Jinny. It’s just like school all over again.”
“Well,” Cecile shrugged. Then she said, “How was it at the telemarketing place?”
“I hate that place,” Ryan declared. “And the people I called were so rude. But who could blame them? I’d be rude too.”
“I always try to be nice to Telemarketers,” Efrem said. “I think you’d have to be really low on the wheel of life to resort to it. So I try to be as decent as possible.”
“Thanks, Ef,” Ryan pulled a sour face.
“Well, now that didn’t come out right, did it?” Efrem murmured to Isaac.
“Do you buy anything from the Telemarketers?” Kevin asked him.
“Hell, no,” Efrem said. “And I tell the bill collectors that I’m dead. Not that I have bill collectors anymore. Thank God. Bastards at the collection agency used to call and call. I was afraid I was going to jail for a while.”
Ryan opened up Isaac’s refrigerator, asking, “Do you mind?”
“Does it matter?”
“If you said no,” Ryan told him, “I would be obliged to shut it and respect your wishes.”
“You hear that, Ef?” Isaac commented. “He would actually respect my wishes.”
Efrem took the eclair off of Isaac’s plate and bit into it. “I’m your best friend. I don’t have to respect your wishes.”
“Of course the worst part of telemarketing,” Kevin said, “is you only get paid according to how many people you convince to buy your product.”
“What?” Ryan head shot up so fast from the refrigerator, that he nearly hit his head on the freezer door.
Cecile looked at Ryan’s desolate expression and said, “Maybe you should get out of this line of work, baby.”
“You know I was thinking,” Jinny said, “whenever I go to the library there are all of these interesting people working there. I always wonder where they all come from. And it seems... not low stress… But sort of unhurried and meaningful. All at the same time.”
“To work in a library?” Cecile said.
“I could work in a library,” Ryan said.
“You could,” Efrem said in a voice that implied, “but you shouldn’t.”
“You always liked the library,” Isaac turned to Efrem.
“That’s right. But I worked in one once and I discovered there’s a difference between coming for an hour or two and having free run of the place and having to stay for eight hour shifts behind a counter. A big difference. You might not want to do that, Ryan.”
“What might I want to do, then?”
“You might want to get the hell out of town for a while,” Efrem told him. “Perspective and everything.”
“I don’t know—” Ryan began and then said, “Christ, I’m whining now!”
Kevin said, “You keep on whining, man,” as if he we were saying, ‘You keep on winning this basketball game.’ “But I gotta go do some grocery shopping for my mom. Are you coming to work tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Ryan said at the same time Cecile said, “No.”
Ryan looked at Cecile, who shrugged and sank down in her chair.
“Yes,” Ryan repeated.
“I’ll see you then.”
When Kevin was gone, Ryan said, “See that? Shit! Kevin doesn’t whine about life. Why can’t I be like that?”
Efrem took out a hand and began to numerate. “Kevin has never one: left Rhodes, two: gone to college or three: had a job over minimum wage. I’m not saying anything’s wrong with that. But I am saying there’s nothing right with it. Don’t be upset because you question things and want a little bit more out of life than a bagboy.”
“I wish I knew what the little bit more was.”
Efrem frowned and said, “I think we all do. But maybe that’s not the point.”
“What’s not the point?”
“To know,” said Efrem. “At least not to know right away. You know?”
He got up. “Are we all ready for the movie?”
“I’m ready for the movie,” Isaac stood up
“I’ve got the popcorn bags and the pop stashed away in my purse,” Jinny said.
“I think I’m just gonna head for home,” Ryan said.
“I think I’ll head for home with Ryan,” Cecile told them.
“Well,” Isaac decided, “at least we can all walk out of the kitchen together.”
“At least,” said Efrem.
“WELL, I GUESS THE PUSSY must have been EXQUISITE cause it’s love now.”
“Excuse me?” Ryan turned to her, his voice cold.
They were in Jinny’s house, in her kitchen. She had that tight feeling that comes when a storm’s about to blow and there isn’t a damn thing to be done about it.
“Are you deaf?’ Cecile asked him. “Have I become suddenly incoherent?”
When Ryan did not answer, she repeated, dropping each word on the floor. “I said the pussy... must... have... been... EXQUISITE.”
“I’m going to ignore that,” Ryan said.
“You might not say anything about what I just said. But I know you won’t ignore it,” Cecile told him. “Hell, you say she went to Saint Antonin’s. I don’t even remember the bitch.”
“She remembers you,” Ryan said.
“She should, I was the only Black girl in my class. I was also the cutest in my year,” she turned to Jinny. “Except for you.”
“I know what I looked like back then,” Jinny said.
“And I would prefer if you used her name,” Ryan said.
“Well, I don’t remember Betsy.”
“Beth.”
“Whatever.”
“She’s blond,” Ryan snapped. “With bright blue eyes.”
“Let me guess?” said Cecile, pleasantly. “Is she white too?”
Ryan glared at her.
“You know what I don’t understand about white folks?” Cecile said loudly. “They all get crazy over some blond hair and blue eyes. Like Hitler. Don’t forget Hitler. No, here this bitch is, who I have NEVER seen, and Ryan fucks her once on a beach and all of a sudden—”
Ryan’s hand bammed down on the table and he shouted, “SHE IS NOT A BITCH!!!”
Ryan’s face was purple. He was so loud that Anne came from upstairs to see what the hell had happened. Jinny was terrified.
Cecile didn’t bat an eyelash. Or at least that’s all she did.
She got up, went to the kitchen door, walked out and then said, “Ryan?”
He glared at her.
“Yes, she is.”
And then Cecile was gone.
Before he could lunge after her, Jinny said, “Ryan, calm down.”
“She doesn’t understand,” Ryan said. “She’s got all of her toys. All of her Chucks and Tommys and Cecile doesn’t know a damn thing about real love. She doesn’t know how I feel about Beth. She’s never loved anyone.”
“Cecile loves me. She loves Efrem.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Ryan said, miserable. “Guys. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be serious for a guy.”
“She loved you,” Jinny told him blankly.
Ryan looked at her.
“She loved you, Ryan. You know she did. And you went off to Colorado, and you broke things off with her. I know you like this Beth girl, and that’s nice. But you’ve got to see it from Cile’s point. You’ve got to.”
SLEEPILY SHE SAID FROM THE BED, “Honey, what are you doing?”
“Nothing. Really. Go back to sleep.”
Cecile ignored him and crawled out of the bedpile to the pool of light made by the desk lamp. Ryan was typing.
“I can’t sleep now. What? Are you writing?”
“I’m trying,” Ryan said, hitting the save button and turning to her
“Ooh,” she gave him a delighted smile. “You’re going to be a big famous writer after all.”
“I don’t even know if I’m going to be a writer, let alone a big famous one,” he said.
She sat on his lap
“I haven’t gotten fat have I?” she said.
“What?”
“I mean, I’m not too heavy to sit on your lap?”
“No, Cile. You never have been.”
“Good.”
“And besides, if I said any different you’d wait till I fell asleep, slash all my tires and call Efrem to take you home.”
“No I wouldn’t,” she muttered, pressing her head into his shoulder. But they both knew she was lying.
“What’s it about?” she murmured.
“I dunno,” Ryan sounded stupid to himself. “There’s this girl, and she’s just come out of a crazy house. She’s come nght back to live with her sister. It’s got the working title ‘When A Bitch Comes Home’. ”
Cecile threw back her head and cackled.
She laughed and laughed until all Ryan could do was smile brightly at her. She smelled of musk and a little bit of that perfume she always wore, and the coconut oil she rubbed into her braids, into the those long, impossibly thin tracks of braid.
When she’d stopped laughing, Cecile said, “I think I’d like the title character.”
“She reminds me a lot of you.”
Cecile stopped, cocked her head and looked at him. He looked at her. He cracked a smile.
“Oh, you’ll pay For that,” Cecile told him.
“I’m sure,” he told her.
MORE AFTER SATURDAY
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
It was nice to read about more of Ryan and Cecile interacting. I still think they are well suited to each other. Telemarketing must be a very tough job for anyone. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! I hope you have as good of a Saturday as I am having! 
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I am glad you're having a great Saturday. Mine isn't quite finished yet, but around here everyone, self included, has been super tired and super grumpy, so.... there's always hope for the future.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
When I look back Beth only lasted for eight week. Or six, I’m not sure. But it seems like longer than that. She was always in need. I mean they say that guys need sex and attention and this and that, and I had thought that maybe I did. By the time I was twenty-one I wasn’t innocent anymore. I was also discouraged because coming back home I saw a lot of friends who were just out of college and here I was with two years left. Cecile wasn’t talking to me. Had she been right? I wanted to say she had not been. I want to say she didn’t know what was going on with me, that she had stayed away from me and not the other way around.
We’d never officially gotten back together. We’d had thar real brief dating time. That was the best time, taking her out, being in love, getting things for her. Prom night. Even making love that first time. The whole time I felt like: this is what it’s supposed to be like. This is what love is.
I believed in romance.
I think every guy does, but we pretend we don’t. I don’t know why.
And then I never started dating Cecile again. We’d just get together and hook up. We’d be casual about it and real tired, just like we were used to each other. I remember one time I came to see her and we were talking about this and that and smoking and then there was a lull in the conversation and we just started getting undressed and went to bed.
Now that I think about it, no wonder she was sick of that. So here I was, riding around in my Gulf with Beth Nelligant, kinda sort of aware that I should be with Cecile.
I wondered if she was with Chuck right now.
“His dick is bigger than yours.”
“That’s great, Cile.”
“It’s much bigger. It’s huge.”
“Great.”
“I’m glad to see you don’t mind.”
“I’m glad that Chuck has a really big dick. Makes me real happy for you, Cile. I don’t mind at all.”
“Do you mind that I told him it was bigger than yours?”
That bitch.
And yet I can’t get that mad at her.
As I’m driving around with Beth, I wonder if at this very moment she’s getting fucked by Chuck’s big ole dick.
Chuck was a good looking guy. Still is I guess. He’s Black, but his dad was white, I think, and he was on swim team. Real tall. Nice. kinda stupid I think. I found out sophomore year that he fucked a lot, like more than I ever would. He’d been doing it since he was twelve. So Cecile was in good hands.
Hope you don’t get syphillis.
Actually, I kind of hoped she did.
Why did I feel this way, driving up Route 6? Why was I thinking about Cile fucking this guy when I was with Beth, and why didn’t I think she’d feel this way about me?
And was she right about what she said, that I was with Beth cause Beth was white?
“Ryan?” Beth said.
“Yeah?”
“Fuck me.”
She was so lazy about it, and it was so in line with my thoughts that I just looked at her in amazement. I looked at her so long she said, “Ryan, the road?”
Then I remembered I was driving.
“Fuck me,” she said.
I know what some people think of me, but I’m not like that. I mean, just cause you’re not a virgin doesn’t mean that you don’t have feelings. Just cause you’re a guy doesn’t mean you don’t want something close to romance. The preemptory command to fuck didn’t sit right with me. It made me kind of grouchy the same time it got me hard. Aren’t we weird like that? Then I was grouchy for being hard.
“Can we get back to town first?” I said sarcastically.
“No,” she said. “I need it now.”
She was serious.
“We’re on the road, Beth.”
“Pull over,” she said.
“I will not—” I began.
And then she unzipped my pants, and unhooking her seatbelt, bent over to give me roadhead—which I don’t believe in.
Cecile claims that Black girls don’t suck dick. All I know is that she never did, and I don’t think I’d ever ask her to. But since I’d met Beth she hadn’t quit sucking my dick. I didn’t want it now, not on a road, not like this. We were a few miles from town. There were wheatfields all around, the occasional car, a barn in the distance.
“Hold on,” I said, cranky and hard and pulled to the side of the road.
“We could get arrested for this. Someone could see.”
“No one will see,” Beth said and she climbed on top of me.
She started to fuck me, not the other way around. She cranked back the seat and I was in the weirdest experience of my life. To my right the wind was rustling through the wheatfield and I could smell cow dung. To my left cars and trucks were whistling by. The leather interior was sticky against my bare ass and on top of me, Beth was just pumping harder and harder. Her hands were planted on my chest. They actually hurt. They went under my shirt and at the same time I was scared and a little embarrassed there was that other part of me that liked the way she was jerking my dick, pulling something out of me down to the base of my stomach, to my shaft, to the tip of light at the end. Her hands and fingers on my nipples, her hands in my hair. She was moaning now, so I must have started fucking her back. I let her come first. I didn’t want to come with her. It’s like if we came at the same time we’d be the same thing and I didn’t want to be the same as Beth. I think I knew I hated her then. As my body convulsed into orgasm under her, I knew I hated her.
“When I was a little girl,” Beth told me, “I used to see monsters on the wall. Did you see monsters, Ryan?”
“No,” I say.
I don’t talk about me and the monsters and peeing in my bed. I don’t talk about Jayson and giving him the necklace. I don’t see anything. It’s late in the day, the walls in her room are yellow gold and the shadows move over them. It’s always warm and afternoon in Beth’s bedroom. I’m never there at night.
At night I am with Kevin or maybe at Jinny’s house where I see Cile and we don’t talk about our huge fight. We don’t look at each other. I feel like when she looks at me she can see me in the back of my car fucking Beth.
“I used to lay in my bed and see the monsters, and I used to wish that they would swoop down and eat me. I’d just want them to eat me up,” Beth would say.
“Ryan, did you ever want the monsters to eat you? I need to be consumed. I need to be burned up.”
I can’t even get it into my head to pretend to be interested, to say, “Gee, Beth, why do you want be burned up?”
Her hands are on me, she’s snuggling up against me. My body feels nervous, edgy while she’s touching me. It’s not like I haven’t slept with a lot of girls by now, like I have trouble having sex with someone I don’t care that much about. But I have a hell of a lot of trouble pretending that I care when I don’t. Usually it’s “Hi, let’s have a drink.” BAM! BAM! Good God! Shoot the load--and I’m out. Not this conversation and going places and being touched and fondled and opened up to.
She never gets tired of it. She wants it again. She’s saying, “Ryan, I need to be consumed.”
There are all of these shadows dancing slowly on the walls, claws and mouths, opening slowly, but not a one of them is the monster. The monster is in this bed beside me, blond and blue eyed and needy. The space she sucks into her is getting wider and wider, pulling me in. Tangled in her hands and her hair and her desperation I feel like I can’t get out.
Her hair’s spread out on my chest and her mouth is on my nipples, her hands are all over me and I’m just lying there.
I can’t get out.
When it’s over we’re wet and pressed together. I’m over two hundred pounds easy, but when I roll off of Beth I feel like I’m the one who’s been crushed. She looks crushed too, her breasts are flat, her hair’s a mess. Her legs are still open. She shuts them now. My erection’s going down. We lay on the bed. It seems things are spinning. The ceiling’s spinning and the bed is turning. Under me the whole world is turning.
This did not do it. It’s done it before. Like the first time on the beach with Beth, body and sand under me. I felt like the harder I fucked her I was fucking the earth too, and going deep into everything. When it was over... I can’t remember how I used to feel. But right now I feel like I don’t know what the hell is going on. Lying on the bed I feel... naked. Which is stupid. I am naked. But I never felt naked before.
I’m back in school again looking at the felt board learning about Adam and Eve. Eve just gave Adam the apple, and they are both naked and ashamed. I always thought, Of course they’re naked. But I never thought of what it meant. Unprotected. Totally unprotected. I feel like I’ve got to get out of this bed and throw some clothes on or else awful things will happen. Like I can’t ever see this girl again.
I’m dressing and I’m paying a lot attention to getting my clothes on. There’s a part of me that’s really pathetic, that’s jamming my tee shirt into my pants and saying, “It’s over now. It won’t happen anymore. It’s over.”
And she starts to snivel and then cry, and then shout and bang the bedspread. God, I hope her family’s not here. She’s a mess. She’s sobbing and screaming and her face is red. This is blackmail.
“Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare!”
And then I’m leaving. I’m going out of that hallway where Beth is crying, and one of the door’s opens and her little brother is looking at me. I can feel his eyes on me, but I ignore them and go down the steps. Out of the house, down the walk, to my Gulf.
I almost get hit and this is when I know I need to pay attention to the road. This is before I am about to call Kevin, before we are about to lose ourselves in an all night orgy. I have got to get her off of me. I can’t stop thinking about the last few nasty weeks.
Everytime I was with Beth, everytime I was on top of her I felt like I was drowning, like she was pulling me into her, not like she was a woman, but like she was some black, sucking awful hole. And when I was under her I felt like she was eating me. And the whole time we were together, in those few weeks I did things with her I never did with another girl. She made me weak. She blew the top off my head. She showed me things I’d never known and so I thought it was love.
Whatever it was, it almost killed me. It scares me to think about it.
I slept and slept the next day. I put it all out of my head. Kevin, the dance club, Beth. I woke up long enough to pee and go down to the kitchen. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of this town.
“What are you so goddamned chipper about?” I said to Jayson. I was mean that day. He frowned.
“One,” he said, “you look like shit. Two: I’m going to Scooter Nelligant’s.”
I frowned and farted out loud. I never wanted to hear that name again.
“Well,” Jayson said, elegantly, “right back at you. Don’t forget, we’re having dinner at Jinny and Anne’s tonight.”
Cecile, Efrem and Isaac, naturally, are at the house. I’m reformed, so to speak. Not in as shitty a mood as I was before. Jayson’s changed too. I wonder if he fought with Scooter. I ask.
“Butt out,” he says.
I flick him on the head.
He ignores me.
There will be no fighting with him. It’s like he’s gone. Did Scooter slip him some drugs?
I ask him.
“Ha ha,” Jayson says, bitterly. “For your info, Scooter wasn’t even there.”
“Then why were you gone so long?”
“Why are you Mother all of a sudden?’ he says,” and crosses his skinny arms over his skinny chest, throwing his back into the cushions of the seat.
TOMORROW NIGHT WE WRAP UP RYAN'S SECTION, AND THEN WE'LL BE COMING BACK TO WARM DARK STONE.
We’d never officially gotten back together. We’d had thar real brief dating time. That was the best time, taking her out, being in love, getting things for her. Prom night. Even making love that first time. The whole time I felt like: this is what it’s supposed to be like. This is what love is.
I believed in romance.
I think every guy does, but we pretend we don’t. I don’t know why.
And then I never started dating Cecile again. We’d just get together and hook up. We’d be casual about it and real tired, just like we were used to each other. I remember one time I came to see her and we were talking about this and that and smoking and then there was a lull in the conversation and we just started getting undressed and went to bed.
Now that I think about it, no wonder she was sick of that. So here I was, riding around in my Gulf with Beth Nelligant, kinda sort of aware that I should be with Cecile.
I wondered if she was with Chuck right now.
“His dick is bigger than yours.”
“That’s great, Cile.”
“It’s much bigger. It’s huge.”
“Great.”
“I’m glad to see you don’t mind.”
“I’m glad that Chuck has a really big dick. Makes me real happy for you, Cile. I don’t mind at all.”
“Do you mind that I told him it was bigger than yours?”
That bitch.
And yet I can’t get that mad at her.
As I’m driving around with Beth, I wonder if at this very moment she’s getting fucked by Chuck’s big ole dick.
Chuck was a good looking guy. Still is I guess. He’s Black, but his dad was white, I think, and he was on swim team. Real tall. Nice. kinda stupid I think. I found out sophomore year that he fucked a lot, like more than I ever would. He’d been doing it since he was twelve. So Cecile was in good hands.
Hope you don’t get syphillis.
Actually, I kind of hoped she did.
Why did I feel this way, driving up Route 6? Why was I thinking about Cile fucking this guy when I was with Beth, and why didn’t I think she’d feel this way about me?
And was she right about what she said, that I was with Beth cause Beth was white?
“Ryan?” Beth said.
“Yeah?”
“Fuck me.”
She was so lazy about it, and it was so in line with my thoughts that I just looked at her in amazement. I looked at her so long she said, “Ryan, the road?”
Then I remembered I was driving.
“Fuck me,” she said.
I know what some people think of me, but I’m not like that. I mean, just cause you’re not a virgin doesn’t mean that you don’t have feelings. Just cause you’re a guy doesn’t mean you don’t want something close to romance. The preemptory command to fuck didn’t sit right with me. It made me kind of grouchy the same time it got me hard. Aren’t we weird like that? Then I was grouchy for being hard.
“Can we get back to town first?” I said sarcastically.
“No,” she said. “I need it now.”
She was serious.
“We’re on the road, Beth.”
“Pull over,” she said.
“I will not—” I began.
And then she unzipped my pants, and unhooking her seatbelt, bent over to give me roadhead—which I don’t believe in.
Cecile claims that Black girls don’t suck dick. All I know is that she never did, and I don’t think I’d ever ask her to. But since I’d met Beth she hadn’t quit sucking my dick. I didn’t want it now, not on a road, not like this. We were a few miles from town. There were wheatfields all around, the occasional car, a barn in the distance.
“Hold on,” I said, cranky and hard and pulled to the side of the road.
“We could get arrested for this. Someone could see.”
“No one will see,” Beth said and she climbed on top of me.
She started to fuck me, not the other way around. She cranked back the seat and I was in the weirdest experience of my life. To my right the wind was rustling through the wheatfield and I could smell cow dung. To my left cars and trucks were whistling by. The leather interior was sticky against my bare ass and on top of me, Beth was just pumping harder and harder. Her hands were planted on my chest. They actually hurt. They went under my shirt and at the same time I was scared and a little embarrassed there was that other part of me that liked the way she was jerking my dick, pulling something out of me down to the base of my stomach, to my shaft, to the tip of light at the end. Her hands and fingers on my nipples, her hands in my hair. She was moaning now, so I must have started fucking her back. I let her come first. I didn’t want to come with her. It’s like if we came at the same time we’d be the same thing and I didn’t want to be the same as Beth. I think I knew I hated her then. As my body convulsed into orgasm under her, I knew I hated her.
“When I was a little girl,” Beth told me, “I used to see monsters on the wall. Did you see monsters, Ryan?”
“No,” I say.
I don’t talk about me and the monsters and peeing in my bed. I don’t talk about Jayson and giving him the necklace. I don’t see anything. It’s late in the day, the walls in her room are yellow gold and the shadows move over them. It’s always warm and afternoon in Beth’s bedroom. I’m never there at night.
At night I am with Kevin or maybe at Jinny’s house where I see Cile and we don’t talk about our huge fight. We don’t look at each other. I feel like when she looks at me she can see me in the back of my car fucking Beth.
“I used to lay in my bed and see the monsters, and I used to wish that they would swoop down and eat me. I’d just want them to eat me up,” Beth would say.
“Ryan, did you ever want the monsters to eat you? I need to be consumed. I need to be burned up.”
I can’t even get it into my head to pretend to be interested, to say, “Gee, Beth, why do you want be burned up?”
Her hands are on me, she’s snuggling up against me. My body feels nervous, edgy while she’s touching me. It’s not like I haven’t slept with a lot of girls by now, like I have trouble having sex with someone I don’t care that much about. But I have a hell of a lot of trouble pretending that I care when I don’t. Usually it’s “Hi, let’s have a drink.” BAM! BAM! Good God! Shoot the load--and I’m out. Not this conversation and going places and being touched and fondled and opened up to.
She never gets tired of it. She wants it again. She’s saying, “Ryan, I need to be consumed.”
There are all of these shadows dancing slowly on the walls, claws and mouths, opening slowly, but not a one of them is the monster. The monster is in this bed beside me, blond and blue eyed and needy. The space she sucks into her is getting wider and wider, pulling me in. Tangled in her hands and her hair and her desperation I feel like I can’t get out.
Her hair’s spread out on my chest and her mouth is on my nipples, her hands are all over me and I’m just lying there.
I can’t get out.
When it’s over we’re wet and pressed together. I’m over two hundred pounds easy, but when I roll off of Beth I feel like I’m the one who’s been crushed. She looks crushed too, her breasts are flat, her hair’s a mess. Her legs are still open. She shuts them now. My erection’s going down. We lay on the bed. It seems things are spinning. The ceiling’s spinning and the bed is turning. Under me the whole world is turning.
This did not do it. It’s done it before. Like the first time on the beach with Beth, body and sand under me. I felt like the harder I fucked her I was fucking the earth too, and going deep into everything. When it was over... I can’t remember how I used to feel. But right now I feel like I don’t know what the hell is going on. Lying on the bed I feel... naked. Which is stupid. I am naked. But I never felt naked before.
I’m back in school again looking at the felt board learning about Adam and Eve. Eve just gave Adam the apple, and they are both naked and ashamed. I always thought, Of course they’re naked. But I never thought of what it meant. Unprotected. Totally unprotected. I feel like I’ve got to get out of this bed and throw some clothes on or else awful things will happen. Like I can’t ever see this girl again.
I’m dressing and I’m paying a lot attention to getting my clothes on. There’s a part of me that’s really pathetic, that’s jamming my tee shirt into my pants and saying, “It’s over now. It won’t happen anymore. It’s over.”
And she starts to snivel and then cry, and then shout and bang the bedspread. God, I hope her family’s not here. She’s a mess. She’s sobbing and screaming and her face is red. This is blackmail.
“Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare!”
And then I’m leaving. I’m going out of that hallway where Beth is crying, and one of the door’s opens and her little brother is looking at me. I can feel his eyes on me, but I ignore them and go down the steps. Out of the house, down the walk, to my Gulf.
I almost get hit and this is when I know I need to pay attention to the road. This is before I am about to call Kevin, before we are about to lose ourselves in an all night orgy. I have got to get her off of me. I can’t stop thinking about the last few nasty weeks.
Everytime I was with Beth, everytime I was on top of her I felt like I was drowning, like she was pulling me into her, not like she was a woman, but like she was some black, sucking awful hole. And when I was under her I felt like she was eating me. And the whole time we were together, in those few weeks I did things with her I never did with another girl. She made me weak. She blew the top off my head. She showed me things I’d never known and so I thought it was love.
Whatever it was, it almost killed me. It scares me to think about it.
I slept and slept the next day. I put it all out of my head. Kevin, the dance club, Beth. I woke up long enough to pee and go down to the kitchen. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of this town.
“What are you so goddamned chipper about?” I said to Jayson. I was mean that day. He frowned.
“One,” he said, “you look like shit. Two: I’m going to Scooter Nelligant’s.”
I frowned and farted out loud. I never wanted to hear that name again.
“Well,” Jayson said, elegantly, “right back at you. Don’t forget, we’re having dinner at Jinny and Anne’s tonight.”
Cecile, Efrem and Isaac, naturally, are at the house. I’m reformed, so to speak. Not in as shitty a mood as I was before. Jayson’s changed too. I wonder if he fought with Scooter. I ask.
“Butt out,” he says.
I flick him on the head.
He ignores me.
There will be no fighting with him. It’s like he’s gone. Did Scooter slip him some drugs?
I ask him.
“Ha ha,” Jayson says, bitterly. “For your info, Scooter wasn’t even there.”
“Then why were you gone so long?”
“Why are you Mother all of a sudden?’ he says,” and crosses his skinny arms over his skinny chest, throwing his back into the cushions of the seat.
TOMORROW NIGHT WE WRAP UP RYAN'S SECTION, AND THEN WE'LL BE COMING BACK TO WARM DARK STONE.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Sounds like Ryan's relationship with Beth does not have a future in this section of the story. Cecile was being a bit cruel to him but I think she just wanted him to be jealous because she missed him. Great writing and I look forward to the conclusion tomorrow!