He had two girls on either side of him—the blonde and the brunette, whatever their names were. The girls were young, maybe nineteen or so, and possibly attractive under all the makeup.
The blonde licked her lips and said, “Nice polka dots. Why don’t you come sit next to me and let me play connect-the-dots.”
The brunette gave me a shy wave and softly squeaked, “Hi, Sawyer.”
I recognized their faces, but still couldn’t remember their names. These were the girls who’d brought me the home-baked pie after Janine dumped me.
“Pie girls,” I said.
The blonde tossed her hair over her shoulder. “We’re about so much more than pie.” She wore a thin white shirt with a red lace bra clearly visible underneath.
The three were on the long sofa—the brown, floral-patterned low-rider that had no legs. I took a seat across from them in the vintage gold brocade armchair.
My gold chair had a great shape, and I’d had big plans to learn about upholstery and restore it to its original splendor, but it had smelled like dog and now it smelled like dog and incense, like the inside of a thrift store.
Spanky didn’t have one of his pipes, but was rolling a joint on his lap, on the pull-out wood cutting board from the kitchen. He didn’t call joints jays or doobies or spliffs, but old fashioneds.
“That’s quite the old fashioned you’re rolling there.”
“My friends deserve the best, and if I can’t give them the best, I’ll give them the most.” He grabbed his crotch suggestively.
“No thanks,” I said, laughing.
Spanky had styled his hair into a fauxhawk, the red locks pointed up and making him resemble a one of those crest-headed birds old ladies keep. He leaned over to kiss the brunette’s neck. She squealed and nearly knocked the board and smattering of buds to the carpet. They started kissing, and I had no choice but to look away from them out of decency.
My eyes eventually finished the circuit of the room and returned to the blonde. Who wears a red bra under a thin white shirt? This one, that’s who.
“Charity,” she said. “That’s my name. I’m sure you didn’t forget, since I baked you that nice pie, but I’m Charity.”
“That explains why I feel so charitable toward you.”
Her face crinkled. “Huh?” She had a short nose that made her look young, especially making that face. “I’m thirsty. We threw some cider in the fridge.”
Spanky stopped kissing his girl long enough to mutter at me, “Get the ladies a drink, you fucking hipster douchebag with no manners.”
“Choadsmoker.”
I got up with a groan, and Charity followed me into the kitchen like a puppy.
“I have a girlfriend,” I said to her as we looked through the drawers for a bottle opener.
“She coming tonight?”
“No, she’s at work. Plus she’s got a kid.”
Charity made a face like she’d just smelled something awful. “Tough break. My mom was a single mom. We were always getting fucked around by guys who said they’d be there for us, but none of them stuck until I got my little brother.”
“Tough break.”
“What’s her kid like?” Charity asked.
“She won’t let me meet her daughter. Actually, I don’t even know if she’s officially my girlfriend.”
Charity smiled up at me, all cute and blonde, face full of dimples… sexy red bra… small waist, nice hips. She had taken her shoes off, and even her bare feet were cute, with red polish on the toes. I had no doubt she wore matching red panties under her peach-colored tight jeans.
“I’m a good listener,” she said.
At last I found the bottle opener and got all four bottles open. I moved quickly to the doorway, eager to get back to the living room and the other people. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the conversation I was having with Charity—she seemed like a nice enough person, but I didn’t want to give her the idea I was interested.
I’d never been one of those guys who had to make an effort to avoid the temptation of other girls. When I was dating someone, my loyalty was with her.
For some guys, other girls were like Jell-O. By that, I mean there was an old advertisement for Jell-O that my friends and I had seen on YouTube. In the advertisement, the announcer said that even after a big meal, there was “always room for Jell-O.” Some of the guys I knew felt that other girls were like Jell-O in that there was always room for them. And that blow jobs didn’t count.
I had tried to be more adventurous about hookups, back before Janine and I started dating. Spanky and I had just moved into the house, and we threw a housewarming party to immediately set ourselves up as the most hated house on the street. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to keep a low profile for a few months and meet some of the neighbors, but what did we know?
So, this pretty girl with long, black hair asked to get a full tour of the house. She was loud and demanding, and not really my type. I actually thought she was into Spanky, so I was surprised when she started kissing me in the upstairs hallway. Before I knew what was happening, she had my jeans down, and I found myself saying that corny thing I bet all guys say: “You don’t have to do that.”
Why do guys say that? You don’t have to do that.
Of course she knows she doesn’t have to do that. But you know once that top button gets undone, it’s heading one of three ways. Or four ways.
That zipper comes down and as a guy, you gotta say the polite line. You don’t have to do that. Ridiculous. Like two women fighting over whose turn it is to pay for lunch. “You don’t have to do that, Suzanne, it’s my turn to pay for lunch! You paid last week, and you only had a salad.”
In my experience at restaurants, I’d seen that exact scene more times than I cared to remember. I’d also seen my share of pink lipstick on cups that had been through the dishwasher. And chewed-up soggy crackers from babies. But I digress.
The girl with the black hair dropped to her knees and kissed the head of my cock. I said the line again, and she responded by stuffing my dick in her mouth. She felt so hot, and her sucking ironically gave me the shivers. As she power-vacuumed my cock down her throat, part of me was so embarrassed for her. Who was this girl to give a blow job to some guy she didn’t know? And who was I to think that was okay? I was completely single and available, but it still didn’t feel right. Well, physically, it felt completely right, which was why I didn’t try that hard to stop her.
After I came, she got back to her feet and hugged me. She whispered in my ear, “I’m Janine. Nice to meet you.”
What to do next?
I asked for her number.
So, we went for a date the next night, because I didn’t want to be that guy. That guy who gets head from some random chick at a party.
I grew up with a lot of female cousins around, so I had some insight into the female brain, though many aspects remained a mystery.
Janine told me she’d taken something before the party—some tranquilizers her friend stole from her mother. She claimed she was a good girl, and that giving head to a stranger was completely out of character for her.
I wasn’t so sure about that, especially since she invited me over to her place for “a rematch” right after our first date dinner. I went to her place because I didn’t want to be that guy. That guy who feels guilty enough about a blow job to go on a single courtesy date and spend $48.77 with tax and tip, and then dumps the girl and never calls again.
I felt comfortable around Janine, like I could say whatever dumb thing popped into my head and she’d laugh with me rather than at me. She had a good laugh. I loved her juicy ass and her big, loud laugh.
But I hadn’t loved Janine.
I’d said the words, of course, but by now, a year after our breakup, I felt like someone else had said those things.
After she dumped me, I’d been low for day or two, and then I didn’t get over Janine so much as I just plain forgot.
When I looked at some
girls, I saw the parts rather than the whole. I don’t mean the tits and ass, either, but the hair that needs daily straightening with a hot iron, the hand that needs to be held at all times while walking outside, and the eyes, always watching my eyes, trying to see what I’m seeing.
Aubrey had the cutest hair. The first time I saw her, it was wavy on one side and flat on the other side, like she’d slept on it and couldn’t be bothered to disguise the fact. And she had that expression—that flat line to her mouth, like her whole life was a staring contest and she was determined not to be the first to blink.
I blinked.
When I looked up at those moon-colored eyes and felt their pull on me, my whole life came to a point, a destination, and it was Aubrey. It had always been Aubrey, even before we met. I’d seen her face a thousand times in my mind, even tried to draw it, but the pictures always came out wrong. This girl in my mind, I’d always imagined her smiling, no trace of sadness in her eyes, but one look at Aubrey and I knew where the lines would go. Aubrey’s eyes tilted down at the corners, and her flat frown was like a wrinkle in an otherwise perfect canvas—the wrinkle that made everything come to life with beautiful, sad, precious imperfection.
After I met Aubrey, sometime between our first words and my attempt to kiss her, I fell for her. She was the muse I’d always wanted, the one who could inspire me to work harder and be greater than myself. That angry man who punched people was part of the past, and she was my future.
So, yeah, I was having a party at my house that Saturday, and I should have been having fun, but all I could think about was how much I missed Aubrey, this girl I barely knew. The idea of her moved through the house alongside me like a ghost of wanting.
I felt her presence so strongly, I was actually worried about catching hell for noticing Charity’s red bra through her thin shirt. It was hard not to notice.
Back in the living room, I dropped into my dog-and-incense-imbued gold chair, dropped all four bottles on the coffee table, and reached for the fat joint from Spanky’s hand. I had to shake myself out of my gloom or it was going to be a very long night.
“Go easy,” he gritted without exhaling. “That old fashioned has some kick. New hybrid blend.”
The cherry sizzled and burned up the paper with my inhale. I let the hot smoke out of my lungs slowly so as not to cough, saying, “When’s everyone else showing up? Are we having a party or what?”
My nostrils stung, and I felt sick and calm at the same time, like I was on a boat with my eyes closed.
Chapter Twenty
Charity took the joint from my hand, her cool, soft fingers rubbing mine in a way that felt intentional.
“You’re looking at the party,” Spanky said. “Party of four.” He let out his first stoned laugh of the night. His stoned laugh was fifty percent longer than his regular laugh, and was contagious.
“No shit,” I said, which made everyone laugh. A few minutes later, I was laughing too.
We had good music, booze, friends, what more could a person want? We had a pool table right there, and a big dart wall.
I didn’t usually blaze, preferring to nurse a few beer instead and stay level while everyone else acted like an asshole. That Saturday, however, I didn’t just accept the fatties when they went around. I demanded my share, despite Spanky’s warnings about the potency.
Soon I was pondering the meaning of the word baked.
Baked.
New hybrid, huh? And what else?
My brain lit up like Christmas in the mall. Everything made sense. The whole world fell into place and I understood absolutely everything there ever was or would be.
Baked, like the desert.
Baked.
Like an evaporated lake, all cracked and scorched.
Why was the lake scorched?
Because of the system-wide reboot. The rain would come and everything would start again.
I tried to explain this to my friends, and they seemed to understand, but when I opened my eyes, they weren’t where I remembered them being.
The brunette untangled herself from Spanky’s many, many arms and excused herself to go to the washroom.
I turned to Charity, who was sitting on the arm of my chair. Had she always been there? The arm wasn’t very comfortable compared to a whole chair, but it made sense, because of the whole system-wide reboot. After I put the new upholstery on the chair, everything would be comfortable.
The brunette was back. Suddenly. And now she was staring at me, shooting me with X-rays.
“Where’d you go?” I demanded. “Why aren’t you in the bathroom?”
“That was an hour ago,” she said.
I gave Spanky a stern look. “Who’s watching the time? That’s your job. If you make us smoke all the spacejunk, you have to watch out for the time.”
Spanky gave me a sideways look, his head tilting farther than seemed safe. “What spacejunk?”
I looked down again at the armrest. Not the one with Charity on it, but the other one, with the control panel for the space ship.
They were making fun of me, so I pretended we were just back at the house, sitting in the living room like normal humans. I rubbed my chin with my hand. That felt really good, so I rubbed my whole face. My mouth tasted like how blue cheese smells. Someone started rubbing my back, between my shoulder blades, and I felt like my whole body was having an orgasm.
This made everyone laugh, even though I didn’t tell them, which seemed like the normal way to communicate.
She kept rubbing my back, so I kept making the sounds.
Then I was distracted by how everything had a color, and all the things were different colors. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of my tattoos. I was very careful to not look at my arms again, because you do not need your tattoos crawling around when you are baked like an evaporated lake.
Someone knocked on the front door. My guts liquefied. Aubrey knew where I lived. She’d seen me through the front window, through the closed curtains, with Charity sitting on my armrest.
Spanky pulled himself out of the couch with a groan. “I don’t know who that is, since everybody’s here,” he said.
I decided to sit very still. Charity had pulled her hand away from my back, so I leaned back into the chair. She reached down and tapped my belt buckle.
“Fancy,” she said.
I pushed her hand away. “Personal space.”
This set the two girls laughing, and Charity rolled off the armrest to the floor, then rolled the rest of the way over to her friend.
We all got quiet, because a new person was in the room. A man with red hair. His hair was so red it made Spanky’s look blond. This new redder man had a baby in his arms. The baby also had red hair, which made me wonder if they were the same person, from two different time lines. On one level, I knew that wasn’t true, and that I was way too high, but puzzling over the possibility was satisfying for my mind.
The redder man said, “I’ve been chewing his nails off, like this.” He put the baby’s fingers in his mouth, and I recoiled in horror, remembering the time a friend’s horse nipped me when I was giving him sugar cubes. I’d gotten in trouble for not holding my palms up. That was really unfair.
The man said, “Nom nom nom,” to the baby.
I expected the girls to do something, because they were the only girls there and surely they knew all about babies by instinct. They just sat on the couch with grim faces and heavy eyelids. They both had the same color of blue eyes, despite completely different hair. That seemed suspicious.
Spanky came running down from upstairs with a shining pair of nail clippers in his hands.
The man thanked him and left.
I looked at my blue shirt and wondered if I was actually at London Drugs again. No, I was at home, in my house.
Spanky sat down again across from me.
“Spanky, did some guy just come in and borrow our nail clippers?”
“Gotta be neighborly,” he said.
I
wanted to make a joke, or get another beer to wash out my mouth, but guilt fell upon me like an iron spiderweb. A baby had been inside our home and now everything was off, like a bass out of tune.
Incompatible.
My life was a box of jagged glass, incompatible with small people.
I couldn’t ruin Aubrey’s daughter’s life. I didn’t even know the little kid, and I was already tainting her life, taking time away from her mother.
I didn’t even know if we were together, but we had to break up.
Immediately.
Already, my solid thoughts were eroding. I had to break up with her while I was still lucid inside this dry desert of knowledge.
I looked around the room for my phone, but the room was hiding it.
Charity wiggled across the floor toward me, moving like an inchworm in a storybook, and then she was at my feet, my knees. She smiled and winked at me, then turned her back and hooked her armpits on top of my knees and sat on the floor between my feet. She reached up and flipped out her long, flaxen hair, so it was cascading up my inner thighs. The gold river of hair started to make me feel charitable toward Charity.
My body relaxed, relief flooding my system. I was less baked than a minute earlier. We were no longer on a spaceship.
Everything was connected and my whole life made sense. I could see clearly now that everything was completely, utterly wrong.
Chapter Twenty-One
AUBREY
One thing I loved about working at the bar was being in a child-free zone. I didn’t mind being around children, but constantly comparing myself to other parents was exhausting.
First, there were the super-parents. Their kids had clean, nice clothes and said please and thank you under the parents’ vigilant watch. I watched them and tried to learn.
Then there were the parents who’d given up. Their dirty-faced kids ran around like monkeys, and the parents didn’t care. Those kids seemed to be just as happy as the ones who said please and thank you.
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