Sex & Violence

by Carrie Mesrobian

  But instead, he talked about the weather clearing up. About Keir’s sheep farm. About the Tonneson’s septic system backing up the week earlier. Dumb shit I didn’t care about. Especially if we were leaving.

  “When were you going to tell me about Boston?” I finally interrupted.

  He looked surprised. And a little guilty.

  “Nothing’s final about Boston, yet, Evan.”

  “Okay, well, school starts pretty soon, Dad. It might be nice to know whether I should enroll somewhere or get my damn GED.”

  “You’re not getting a GED,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Colleges want to see a diploma.”

  I didn’t tell him that college was completely foreign to me, that I couldn’t imagine actually finishing high school. It seemed like I’d just continue on, one new shitty place after another.

  “So, you just sleeping with Brenda until her boyfriend gets back from California?”

  “Evan, Jesus,” he said. “What are you talking about? Why are you so damn angry?”

  “I’m not angry. I’m perfectly fine,” I said. “About Boston, which you haven’t said one thing about to me. And Brenda too. Go ahead and not answer. I’m asking a simple question. Because I don’t know how this works with you now. Because we never make chicken stir-fry. And we never go to parties. And you never hang out with chicks. It’s hard to keep up with you these days, Dad.”

  My dad pulled his fishing pole out of the water and set it down with a bang. “I don’t really think this is any of your business. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”

  “Right,” I said. “None of my business. Who you sleep with. What was I thinking? Since I don’t even get to know where we’re going to live half the time.”

  I set down my fishing pole with a bang too and started pulling up the anchor. Because I’d picked a brilliant time for an argument. While we were trapped together in the middle of a lake.

  “Do you have a problem with Brenda or something?” he asked.

  “No, do you?”

  “You’re being childish.”

  He started the motor so it was too loud to talk. Instead of looking at him, I just examined my hands. The sprained left one had healed, but I didn’t like to make a tight fist with it. The right had fading scars. I imagined using it on my father’s blank face.

  We docked in silence. My father cut the engine and gathered up the tackle and fishing rods.

  “Okay,” he said, standing between me and the shore. “I like Brenda. But … obviously, there are issues there. I’m … uncomfortable discussing it.”

  “Yeah, whatever, you’re uncomfortable. Seems like you’re comfortable enough hooking up with women who belong to other guys.”

  “What did you just say?” he asked, grabbing my arm tighter than I could remember him ever doing.

  I didn’t repeat it. I knew he’d heard me. I stared right into his blue eyes, pinched at the corners with wrinkles.

  “You think you know the whole story, Evan,” he said. “But you don’t.”

  “Good thing you like to keep me so informed,” I said, ripping my arm away from him and heading up the dock.

  “Evan, wait … ”

  “I’ve got somewhere to be, Dad,” I called over my shoulder. “But you can set me straight later. On the way to Boston.”

  Then I ran to Baker’s cabin, because I knew he wouldn’t follow me. Wouldn’t ruin his image of jazz and stir-fry and whiskey sours and painted toenails in front of anyone …

  Baker was at the screen porch table reading a book.

  “Hey,” I said to her, a little out of breath. “I need to leave. Go into town. Right now. You want to come with?”

  Five minutes later, we were sailing toward Marchant Falls with sixty Elmo cupcakes in the backseat. Baker stared straight forward, her sunglasses on, her little white dress wrinkling over her tan thighs. I had all the windows open, and Baker turned up the radio, like she understood that I didn’t want to talk.

  I pulled up to Layne and Jacinta’s house, turned off the engine.

  “We don’t have to stay. I’m just going to deliver the cupcakes, and we can go do something else.”

  “Okay.” Baker looked nervous. But nervous-excited. I felt the same way.

  “You decide what we should do, then.”

  “Taber just texted me about this party in town,” she said. “Someone Jim knows.”

  “Well, then, let’s go.” Though I didn’t want to do that at all. I just wanted her. Wanted to scoop her up and eat her. Wanted Jim to go away again. I couldn’t really hate his guts, which would have been easier. I just wanted him erased, at least long enough for Dirtbag Evan—for me—to get what I wanted from her. Then I could be erased, and so could she.

  “You’re so nice, Evan.”

  God. If she only knew.

  “Wait till you find me making out with some loadie chick tonight,” I said. “Then we’ll see how nice you think I am.”

  “Well, you’re nice to me.”

  “I was a dick that one time,” I reminded her.

  And then I wanted to kiss her, but that seemed stupid, as I’d just mentioned making out with someone else and also that I was a dick. I was a dick. But damn, it didn’t matter, because then her hand was on my thigh and she was kissing me and a second later I felt like persuading her to get over her car-sex aversion. Might have too, if not for bucket seats and Tim Beauchant banging his giant fist on the window and laughing his ass off.

  “Jacinta needs the cupcakes, man!” he yelled. “Quit humping that chick already! This is a family-friendly event!”

  I felt a little stupid, though there was no shame in being accused of humping a girl as cute as Baker, who Tim helped out the passenger door like he was some kind of gentleman wearing a cape and not a tattooed greasy-fingernail guy with biceps bigger than my head.

  I introduced them as we hauled the cupcakes inside. And then we kind of just got rooked into staying. Not that Baker minded, being a social person, unlike me, the troll slinking under his bridge.

  Harry’s party was huge. Inside Jacinta scrambled around while old grandparents parked it on the couch and harassed-looking mothers stood around the food. Out back, Layne grilled hot dogs and guys who resembled some version of Jacinta or Layne hovered around a keg. Everyone smoking. I introduced Baker to Jacinta, and then Harry barreled in, shirtless with red Magic Marker scribbling all over his chest. He jumped up toward me and yelled “Cupcay!” I lifted him up and tickled his belly for a minute. Baker thought Harry was charming as hell and tried to talk to him, but he got all shy, and I put him down so he could rejoin the pack of kids. Then while Baker helped Jacinta, I went out back to get a beer and caught a bunch of shit for being the fag who made the Elmo cupcakes and met a bunch of Layne and Jacinta’s relatives whose names I didn’t remember. Then Jacinta came out the back screen door with a giant tower of cupcakes and we all sang Happy Birthday to Harry while I took pictures with people’s cameras. The little kids took off like maniacs with the cupcakes, Harry screaming while wearing a firefighter helmet with frosting all over his face.

  Layne put his arm around Jacinta, who was smiling.

  “Told you the kids would love them,” she said. “And no goddamn plates.”

  “Don’t swear in front of your son,” Layne teased her.

  Everyone piled up paper plates with hot dogs and chips and sloppy joes and the backyard filled up with people eating and the little screen door between the kitchen and the patio slammed every twenty seconds from either moms getting more food or kids chasing each other. Tim started telling Baker about my boxing abilities and how it didn’t matter that I was skinny, because of the size of the fight in the dog, which embarrassed the shit out of me, so I went to refill my beer and got caught talking with one of Jacinta’s uncles about fishing and ice fishing, both forms of the sport that I knew jackshit about, but Jacinta’s uncle was half in the bag and happy to explain it to me.

  I was half in the bag myself by the time I came back
to Tim and Baker. Baker was telling him about the history of the Beauchants in Marchant Falls, Marcus Beauchant being an esteemed fur trader and Indian ally, and the namesake of the Beauchant River, which she pronounced in the Frenchy way and which pleased Tim to no end. And I could tell that Tim was charming the shit out of Baker, because she kept laughing, and I didn’t care, as long as he kept her laughing. Then Layne motioned to me, like, I need to talk to you, and we walked over to the keg.

  “So, I don’t think she’s gonna show tonight,” Layne said.

  “Who?”

  “Lana, you dumbass,” he said. “Randy got to her before I could get out to Riverbend last night.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She went home with him,” Layne said. “Nothing I could do without picking a fight with Randy.” He pointed at Baker with his beer. “So. She your girlfriend now?”

  “She’s got a boyfriend.”

  “Too bad,” Layne said. “Because you no longer have my permission to bang Lana. Because as long as Randy’s around and Lana’s an idiot, who knows what’ll happen if he finds out about you guys. This is a small fuckin’ town, Evan. He’ll find out.”

  I flashed to behind The Donut Co-op. Was Lana really as dumb as Layne was saying? Dumb enough to fuck us both and tell Randy all about it? I knocked back the rest of my beer and poured another from the keg immediately. Then I couldn’t sit still. I spent the rest of the party sucking down beer and chasing little kids and helping Jacinta with the food and talking to Layne’s grandmother about the price of vegetables at Cub Foods versus at the Discount Food Mart in the strip mall on Shawton Street. It was a confusing conversation until Tim and Baker came over and Tim yelled, “Grandma, don’t even lie, we all know you just like Discount Foods because it’s right next to the porn store!” To which his grandmother laughed and lit one of those super-thin lady cigarettes.

  The sun was down, and I was pretty damn drunk when the party ended. Jacinta held Harry on her lap in a lawn chair. She looked completely beat while he slurped on a Freeze Pop, which was spilling down his arm onto Jacinta’s dress. Baker was playing hearts with Tim and some of the cousins. Layne lit a cigarette and sat down in a lawn chair beside me, slapping at mosquitoes.

  “So, your hours gonna change when school starts, Evan?” Layne asked. “Or will you just quit on me, and I’ll have to find two new dumbasses to replace you and Terry?”

  “You fired Terry?”

  “Kind of hard to work when you’re stuck in county lockup.”

  “I might move to Boston.”

  “Why Boston?” he asked, exhaling cigarette smoke through his nose like an angry bull.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Well, I have to think about it,” Layne said. “You’re a good worker, and I’ll have to bust ass to replace you. You think people would want jobs in this shit town, but most of them don’t want to actually come to work. You’re reliable, at least. Even if you fuck up the organic bananas still.”

  “Organic bananas are stupid,” I said. “You don’t eat the peel, anyway. Who gives a shit if there’s pesticide on the goddamn peel?”

  “The only difference is the price,” Layne said.

  “I’m sorry about Lana,” I blurted out, because I was drunk as hell. “I shouldn’t have messed with her. She’s your sister.”

  “Half sister,” Layne corrected.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Layne said. “She’s as dumb as my real sisters.”

  We laughed and then Tim and Baker came over.

  “Baker said her car’s at the parking lot by the historical society,” Tim said. “You need to go over there and jump it for her. I’ve got cables.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But what if it’s not a battery thing but something else? And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Tim, but I’m hardly in any shape to jump Baker’s bones, much less her car.”

  Tim laughed. Baker’s cheeks got super red, but she said she texted Jim and Taber to meet us there and to help out.

  “Call me if you need a tow,” Tim said. “No charge. You don’t want to let that car sit there, though; the cops always tag the cars in that lot.”

  We said our good-byes to Jacinta, who was holding a now-sleeping Harry and looked ready to hit the sack herself, and Layne, who shook my hand and said, “You’re an all-right guy, Evan. And I’m sorry about calling you a fag for the cupcakes. Harry fucking loved them.”

  “Don’t swear in front of your son,” Jacinta said tiredly.

  Baker drove and I sat in the passenger seat feeling sloshy and talking way too much. About how the chocolate cupcakes turned out the best and how awesome Harry was and how I would love to have my own little boy someday and how Tim was my hero and how Baker should have sex with him instead of me, if she wanted to be non-monogramous so bad.

  “It’s non-monogamous, idiot,” she corrected.

  “Well, that’s how Jim pronounces it,” I said. “Maybe that’s why you guys can’t figure out how it works.”

  “Jesus, you’re wasted!” Baker pulled in next to her Honda.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll forgive you, Evan,” she said, patting my knee. “If you tell me the Cupcake Lady of Tacoma story.”

  I shook my head, and we jumped out to see if she had any tickets.

  “Two of them, fifteen bucks each,” she said. “Not great, but not terrible.”

  Then I kissed her. Because just then I couldn’t keep my hands off her.

  “Evan, Jim’ll be here any minute,” she said, pushing me off.

  “So?” I asked. “You’re not breaking your rules.”

  “But you’re leaving.”

  “So are you.”

  She looked like she might cry. I didn’t want to know what I looked like.

  I thought of Collette in the library courtyard, pushing me back, telling me to focus on Monday. At least that’d been a possibility. Baker’s face held the opposite of possibility. Like my drunk ass embarrassed her. Nothing I could do about that, of course. I was drunk, a mix of happy and angry and horny. And sad—Baker was deleting me out of her phone, and we hadn’t even fucked.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered a little, and then headlights pulled up and blinded her. I turned around to see a rusty pickup. From the driver’s side came a long-haired guy with cowboy boots, spitting chew into a Mountain Dew can. Randy Garrington. Had to be. Because coming out the passenger side and staggering after him was a tall blonde girl. Lana.

  Baker stared at Lana’s short shorts and long fingernails, and I felt crippled with shame. Lana was drunk. Even ten feet away, I could smell the goddamn Cherry Lick.

  Randy, on the other hand, seemed completely sober. He looked amused at me, like I was wearing a Halloween costume out of season or something. He obviously thought he could take me. Which he probably could. Which pissed me the fuck off.

  Now Lana was tugging on Randy as if to pull him back, though he wasn’t even moving. She looked excited and thrilled, like she was enjoying starting shit between two guys she fucked. Lana, who never started anything, who I had to lead through getting naked? Lana, whom I felt sorry for?

  “What the hell’s going on?” Baker whispered.

  I didn’t answer her. I was getting madder and madder, and my arms felt like jelly, like I’d been hitting Tim’s heavy bag, and though I was completely fucking drunk, I could tell Baker was adding it up. The loadie girl, this big guy looking me over. Which just made me madder. At myself.

  “I told him not to come to the party,” Lana said, her voice all sticky and whiny. “But he followed you from Layne’s, Evan. Evan, I’m so sorry …”

  “Just shut the fuck up,” I said.

  Lana froze, but Randy surged forward.

  “You’re a little punk piece of shit,” Randy said, smiling. “Funny how you act so tough.”

  I didn’t think, just swung back and hit him. Right in the face. He made a sound, sor
t of girly, which made me think I’d done it. The lucky punch. And then, while my right hand dazzled in pain—it wouldn’t have surprised me if stars and sunlight started shooting out of it—Randy Garrington laughed. Wiped his mouth.

  “Randy, don’t … ” Lana shouted, sounding thrilled again.

  “You started this, girl,” Randy said, easy as anything. “Now stay out of it.”

  I pushed him against his truck, and the Mountain Dew can flew across the parking lot. Baker started yelling behind me, but I didn’t listen.

  “You fucking cocksucker,” I said. Then, because my right hand was completely obliterated, I hit him with the left.

  Which did even less than the right. Randy just pushed me off until I slid on the loose gravel of the parking lot.

  “You’re not worth it,” Randy said. “It makes Lana’s panties wet to see a fight, but I’m not going back to lockup over some punk kid.”

  “Randy!” Lana whined, all outraged.

  “Get back in the truck!” Randy yelled and Lana jumped. So did I. This was the first time he raised his voice, and then I just knew, by his instant pissed-off-ness, that I was fucked.

  What people don’t tell you about fights is how quick they go if you know what you’re doing, but I wasn’t the one who knew what he was doing. Maybe it would have gone different, had I let Randy dictate the whole situation, just backed off. But I was drunk and out of moves. So I just spit in his face. After that I was underneath him, my back screaming against the gravel while he whaled punches on my face and neck, and I flailed like crazy trying get him off me. Now both girls were shouting, and there was blood in my mouth. I flinched, sure my nose was going to break on the next hit, but then the pressure on my chest eased and Randy was off me.

  But I wasn’t the one who got him off me. Taber was. Taber lifted Randy Garrington off me, and I laid in the gravel like I’d become one with the parking lot. Faintly, I heard Taber slam Randy against the truck and yell at him, and then Baker was crouching beside me. Saying, “Evan, oh my god! Evan? Why did you do this? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Everything,” I wanted to say. But my mouth hurt. Then Jim was there, saying, “Jesus, you okay, man?” Jim helped me sit up. Baker came running with a towel from somewhere and pressed it against my face. My nose wasn’t broken, but it hurt, and my eyes were throbbing. I thought I might pass out. And then I did.