All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  “My Ruby, she is first,” Javier said, kneeling next to the coffee table. He opened the Sucrets tin and pulled out a short metal straw, beckoned her to him. Ruby bit her lower lip, shook her head. “Is part of the celebration,” he said, smiling widely. “Just a leetle bit won’t hurt.”

  She could only think of how poorly she’d done with amphetamines. Cocaine would be the same—maybe worse. And besides, how could he afford it? The casino still hadn’t paid him. He couldn’t afford rent, and he still asked Ruby for grocery and gas money.

  “Is my birthday gift to you, mi amor. Feliz cumpleaños.”

  Everyone was watching them. She knelt beside him, whispered, “You first—show me,” and so he bent over the stem of the R, closed one nostril with a fingertip, and inhaled sharply through the metal tube. He raised his head, sniffed again deeply, and ran his index finger under his nose. “Is muy simple,” he said, handing her the coke straw.

  Nervously rolling the straw in her fingertips, Ruby took a deep breath and then imitated Javier’s ritual. It tasted bitter.

  “Here, do this,” Javier said, dipping his fingers in a nearby glass of water and snorting the water. “Is better for your nose and keeps powder from—I don know the word. Clod? Clump?”

  “Oye! Elisa!” Iago shouted from his cage in the corner, and everyone laughed.

  While the others took their turns inhaling her name, Ruby went to stand on her front steps and cool down. She felt the powerful blood rush of the drug. She stared at the stars and felt the return of the enthusiasm she’d had for her birthday, for this Valentine’s Day, and for sharing it with someone she loved. She wanted to dance across the courtyard. She could do anything, be anyone. She was high on Javier’s mountaintop in Holy Toledo, Spain. She could see for miles.

  Leaning against the doorjamb and looking back into the heat of her living room, she watched him flirting with Jasmine, a petite bird of a thing Dee had brought along. She saw Javier use a move he’d used on her—the downward-cast eyes, the shrug of his shoulders as if he were feeling shy. She saw him lean close to Jasmine and whisper something. She could almost see tendrils of hair come loose from Jasmine’s high ponytail as they lifted on the breeze of Javier’s breath.

  In her mind, Ruby could hear Etta James singing “I’d Rather Go Blind,” and she thought, Oh, Etta. I know. She would rather go blind than to see Javier walk away with anyone—Vivid or Dee or Jasmine or some stranger. She’d give up reading, watching clouds skitter across the sky, the acid green of a Granny Smith apple, if only she could be sure she’d never have to watch the back of him as he walked out of her life. Javier could give her life and take it away—just like that.

  And then a countervailing voice reminded her that she was the one who held this man. This man all the women wanted. This sexy man. He was with her, in love with her, living with her. Of all the women in this room, of all the women in Las Vegas, he’d chosen her. Ruby felt her precariousness, but she also felt alive. Her fingertips tingled with budding sparks.

  She wanted Javier. In bed. Now. She wanted the party to be over, and she wanted for him to take her. With force.

  He looked up from his halfhearted, knee-jerk pursuit of Jasmine and saw Ruby standing in the doorway. They locked gazes. She could tell the others were watching them as they continued to stare at each other. The look in his eyes told her she was the one he wanted. Forever. Now. He took a deep breath and began to walk toward her.

  “Hoo-boy,” Rose said to no one in particular. “I think it’s time to go.”

  Ruby knew she should be a proper hostess, bid them all good night and thank them, but she was caught in the conflagration of Javier’s stare. She was marginally aware of the others filing out, of brief hugs and fleeting kisses. She might have managed a “Good night” or two, but she wasn’t certain, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the man who stood in the center of her living room, put his palm to the back of her neck, and kissed her so hard that she knew her lips would bruise.

  * * *

  —

  IN HER BED—THEIR bed—he lasted forever. He pounded her mercilessly, and she felt the familiar rapture of complete submission. Her head banged against the headboard, and she relished the edge of pain brought on by his relentlessness. Pinning her arms to the mattress, he rose up and looked down between them, then into her face, and said, “I like to watch the place where we meet.”

  He flipped her over, laid his weight along the length of her back. He opened his jaws wide and bit, taking nearly all of the width of her neck into his mouth. Shivering, with her face pressed into the darkness of the pillow, Ruby became a doe in the forest. She was brought down, held down. Devoured. She reverberated with her secret annihilation.

  Ruby wrote to the Aviator and told him she was in love. In her excitement, she had to fight the inclination to end every sentence with an exclamation mark. As usual, the Aviator answered her with a book. This time, it was One Hundred Years of Solitude. It did not escape Ruby’s notice that the city from the book, Macondo, was a city of mirrors and that the author, Gabriel García Márquez, was Colombian. The Aviator was always full of subtle warnings, it seemed. But what could he possibly know about her lover? She’d studied the lines of Javier’s palm; she knew that it was full of promise, that he had a solid, unbroken line of success, that his heart line was clear and true.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN SHE CAME home from a hair appointment, Javier was waiting. Seated in one of her wingback chairs, he patted his lap.

  “Here,” he said. “You come here.”

  Ruby stood before him, her legs bare beneath a white denim miniskirt. She wore a magenta halter top tied behind her neck, the loose ends of the bow trailing down her back, tickling. Javier slid his hands beneath her skirt and lifted it to her waist, exposing her black lace thong panties. He took hold of her hips and turned her so that she faced away from him, and then he ran his hands over her bare buttocks. Ruby sighed with pleasure.

  “Come here,” he said again and guided her so that she was lying face down, bent over his lap, her skirt still raised to reveal her backside. She felt one of his fingers slide beneath the crotch of her panties and bury itself within her.

  “Oh,” she moaned.

  “Where you have been?” he asked, still running his hands over her body.

  “Hairdresser,” she breathed, her forehead pressed uncomfortably into the arm of the chair.

  He kept one hand on her butt, holding her in position, and with the other he untied the halter top. He tugged it down so that it, too, lay scrunched at her waist. She felt him reach beneath her and pinch her nipples.

  “I didn’t know where’d you have gone.”

  She didn’t answer him; she was caught in the undertow of his caresses, his manhandling of her body, and her exquisite vulnerability.

  Smack! He struck her butt hard, open-palmed, and it stung.

  “What?” she said, surprised and trying to lift herself.

  “Stay.” His voice was firm. He pressed one hand into her lower back, pinning her in place, and then he struck her again, harder.

  “Javier!” Again she tried to lift herself, but she was off balance, couldn’t get her feet beneath her. She felt the growing heat of the skin he’d struck. He sent two fingers inside her.

  “You have been very bad girl,” he said. His mouth was near her ear, and his breath on the side of her face was hot. “Very bad,” he said, smacking her.

  He hit her again. And again. Although she squirmed beneath the stinging blows, she quit trying to stand. She surrendered. And with that, she felt the wet tide of her desire rising.

  “You won’t.” Smack! “Go away!” Smack! “Again.” Smack!

  When he stopped punishing her and instead put his tongue to the red-hot handprints, murmuring Mi amor mi amor mi amor, she cried out and came, her moans seeping into the chair
’s pink-and-white upholstery.

  Javier waited until she’d calmed, and then he led her by the hand as if she were a pliant child. He took her to their bed and slowly made love to her.

  “You are Botticelli’s Primavera,” he whispered. “This creamy skin.” He sighed, pressing his cool cheek to her fiery, wounded skin. Her skin that sang of him.

  * * *

  —

  RUBY FELT A thin patina of shame coating her life. She hid from everyone—including herself. It was nearly incomprehensible that, for her, desire’s heat was so solidly fused with fear and pain. It was also, she knew, incontrovertible evidence of her misbegotten soul. She was depraved. Somehow, Javier had seen that in her. He coaxed her depravity, blew upon the embers and grew them into a firestorm.

  It was a terribly powerful secret to share with someone. More intimate than everyday sex, it bound her to him, irrevocably. And yet she hadn’t needed to resort to cutting for weeks, maybe months now. Javier had cured her. She thought about tossing her box of razor blades into the bathroom trash basket, but she held off. That sweet box of sharpness was her safety net, and she wasn’t yet ready to trust that she’d survive without its promise, any more than she could fathom surviving without Javier.

  For the most part, Ruby stayed away from the cocaine, but she funded Javier’s increasing habit. Sometimes, she spent nearly a thousand dollars a week to feed his need.

  “We will create our world,” he promised. “Just us.”

  Ruby stopped going out with her friends. When Chicago Johnny came to town and tried to take her to see Tony Bennett, who’d signed a lifetime contract with Caesars, she pretended she had to work. In truth, she wanted no distractions. She wanted only to inhabit their own, perfect universe.

  * * *

  —

  RUBY BEGAN WORK on the forthcoming Dunes production, Savage ’70s! There would be tigers onstage with the dancers—a frisson of danger for both the showgirls and the audience, and a huge draw. The rehearsals were long, exhausting. And after the show each night she still had to fulfill her commitment to charm the high rollers.

  One night when she got home after three A.M., Ruby began undressing in the dark. As her eyes adjusted, she could see the hump of Javier’s body beneath rumpled bedcovers. The ashtray on his side of the bed was spilling over, and several days’ worth of his dirty clothes lay strewn across the bedroom floor like the jumbled carcasses of roadkill. Not tonight, she thought. In the morning, I’ll tell him to pick up after himself. She climbed in next to him, felt his warm, sleep-infused skin touch hers.

  He pushed his face into her neck and inhaled deeply. “I can smell them on you. You stink.” Roughly, he shoved her away, backed himself to the edge of the bed.

  “I smell like the casino. Nothing else.”

  “I don’t belief you. You have been making love with one of those ol’ men.”

  Dismissively, tiredly, she said, “Believe what you want to believe. I can’t stop you.”

  Javier threw off the covers and abruptly sat up. With a dramatic flourish, he dropped his legs to the floor and stood. Ruby watched the outline of his body in the meager gray light, and she longed to bring him back so that she could touch the dips in the muscles at the tops of his hips.

  “Don’t do this,” she said as he began pulling on his jeans.

  “You don’t listen. A wooman should show her man respect.” He pulled a dirty T-shirt from the floor and slipped into his sandals.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Is what you want.”

  Ruby sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. The light stung, briefly. “Of course I don’t want that!”

  “Then you must hear what I am saying to you.”

  She patted the bed beside her. “Come back and talk.”

  “I have said what there is to say.”

  “No! You announced your opinion,” Ruby said, now angry, “and now you’re throwing a fit.”

  He turned and looked at her. “You think you are better dan me. You think I am here to cook for you and take care of you.”

  “I thought you liked cooking!”

  “I am no your servant. You make like I am your slave.”

  “Oh, honestly. That’s not the least bit true, and I don’t for a moment believe you really think that.”

  “You go with those other men. You are out all night. You come back to our casa and you stink of those men. You leave me here alone all night. That is a slave.” He picked up his camera from the top of the bureau and looped the strap over his head. It bounced once on his chest. He drew his hand through his hair, and then, wordlessly, he walked out of the apartment.

  Stunned, Ruby heard his VW cough to life and back out of the parking space out front. What had just happened? He knew full well what her job entailed. He had even once insistently sat at the bar, sullen-faced, as he watched her charm the big spenders. Javier knew that was how she financed his coke habit. Recently, he’d finally confessed that when they met he’d only been auditioning as the Dunes photographer. He wasn’t hired; all the work he’d done was on spec, and none of it had been up to the Dunes’ standards. He had no income of his own. He was fumbling, tripping, and scattered, and he needed her help—which she was only too happy to give. She liked providing for him, turning the tables on the usual man-as-provider thing. They were a modern couple. She loved him! How could he possibly think Ruby was hopping in and out of a dozen men’s beds? What was it about her that led him to think such things?

  Endlessly churning, she couldn’t sleep. She got up, made a pot of coffee, and sat waiting for him. Surely he’d drive for a while, calm down, and then come through the door, sheepish and apologetic. He’d realize his overblown reaction was based on a big, fat misconception.

  Ruby listened to Janis Joplin singing “Piece of My Heart” playing on the clock radio and thought: Yes, that’s right. Let him do his worst; I’ll show him how strong a woman can be.

  But in his absence the cavern inside of her, where her heart beat and where she truly lived, opened into a giant black maw of need and lonesomeness.

  * * *

  —

  HE STAYED AWAY for three long days. When at last he returned, Javier put his key in the lock, set his camera back in its habitual spot on the bureau, and didn’t say where he’d been. Ruby was afraid to ask, afraid to learn that he’d been with another woman. Instead, she told herself he’d been staying with someone he knew on the UNLV campus, likely sleeping on the floor of some dorm room.

  He gave her a conciliatory kiss as if it were a diabetic’s rationed piece of candy, and she tried to ignore the fact that his breath smelled like mildewed shoe leather. But maybe that meant that he’d been sleeping in the back of his bus with his photography equipment pushed to the side. He was grubby, in desperate need of a shower. Yes! She nearly sang her relief. He’s been camping out. Alone. Definitely alone.

  In an effort to prove that she did not think of him as her hired cook, she made him a spinach and mushroom omelet while he showered. Running the kitchen faucet until the water flowed ice cold, she wet her fingertips and wiped the remnants of sleep from her eyes; she’d had only four hours of rest.

  Ruby knew she’d have to be the first to apologize. It seemed a small enough capitulation; her ego could handle it. In the past, he’d told her she was overly sensitive, and she believed him. She was determined to love well, to accept imperfection.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, handing him his plate, picking up her toast and chewing, dryly. “I don’t want for us to fight like that.”

  “I am missing you,” he said, taking a bite. “This is good.”

  Ruby rubbed her forehead. There was only one possible solution to their impasse; she would have to cut back on the after-show mixing. It would reduce her income, and it would definitely tick off Bob Christianson and the powers that be at the Dunes, but wh
at was she to do? Maybe Javier was only human to be jealous. Even Achilles had his weak spot.

  When he finished eating, Javier picked up his billfold and slipped a couple of fingers into the far reaches of what appeared to be a secret recess created to hide bills. He withdrew a chit of paper, which he unfolded and gazed at for a beat too long.

  “Here,” he said at last, passing it to her.

  In what was clearly a woman’s handwriting, the note said Rebecca Dunworthy, and beneath that was a carefully printed phone number.

  Ruby accepted the scrap of paper. “What’s this?” she asked, although she knew exactly what it was. Men were constantly passing her cocktail napkins, business cards, all sorts of things inscribed with their hopeful phone numbers.

  “I am giving it to you. To prove to you that I will no call her.” He raised a hand as if swearing an oath. “I give it to you to destroy.”

  She knew that she was supposed to see just how enormously desirable he was, and she was supposed to believe that in relinquishing the phone number, he was presenting incontrovertible evidence of his faithfulness.

  When she remained silent, he said, “I am putted myself in your hands.” She could see how hard he was working to gauge her expression.

  Ruby handed him the paper. “You can choose to be with me—or not,” she said, feigning more confidence than she truly felt, “but I’m not going to be your jailer. I don’t want to be your jailer.” She watched as he struggled with her unexpected reaction. After a few moments, Ruby could see him decide to drop it and instead change direction.

  “I have beened thinking.” Javier began tearing the paper into increasingly smaller pieces. He’d not yet shaved, and Ruby thought she rather liked the rough look of his stubbled face. “Málaga, Spain. Is by the shore. The Mediterranean Sea. You know it?” He sifted the last of the torn paper into the ashtray.

  Ruby shook her head. Her sense of geography was dismal.