by CD Reiss
“One time…” she said, then paused.
“Go on.”
“I shot up heroin.”
I tried not to choke on my wine. “How was it?”
“Incredible.”
“Really? And just the once? I don’t get a whole story? Just six words and an adjective?”
“I’m gauging your reaction.”
“I went to private schools. My friends financed dealers and producers to ensure their own product flow. So,” I poured more wine, “how does a beautiful Catholic girl end up with a needle in her arm?”
“I’ve been tested since, you know. I’m clean.”
I didn’t say another word. I held out another bit of pinkabet, which she took. I was going to feed her until she told me about this tiny crevice of her life.
“Ok, well.” She swallowed. “It was, like, the core of a laugh. You know that wavy good feeling you have inside before the laugh comes out? But the laugh is a release from that feeling, and when you’re done laughing, it goes away. So without the laugh, and the release, it got huge. It kind of started in my heart and worked outward like a supernova and stayed there. Imagine that feeling, that happy feeling before you laugh, being big and staying. I was lying down, but I was flying, and at the same time. Well, at first it was just the good pre-laugh feeling, but then the tension came and I wanted it released, because it was painful. Emotionally painful. Like, if the tension got too much, and it broke, so much sorrow would come out.”
She paused and took a sip of wine, not looking at me. “When I came down, I puked and I felt like crap. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? But I knew the first time is the only really great time, and I didn’t want to end up some sick addict. Not even to be Janis Joplin.”
“But why do it in the first place?”
“Kevin… I know you’re his biggest fan. He and I used to do things just to experience them. Just to see, you know, if there was something to it, or if we could translate it into our work. So we did some stupid things.”
“But he never tied you to a bedpost?”
“No.”
“He’s a sad man.”
She laughed. “We ran with our eyes closed. We walked through downtown barefoot. We slept on Skid Row a whole weekend.”
I think I let the silence go a little too long. I was thinking about her huddled in filth under an overpass, broken glass underneath her, and strange, unstable people within arms’ reach.
“What?” she asked, sipping her wine.
“Did he sleep? When you were on Skid Row?”
“I guess.”
I took her hand. “I couldn’t sleep knowing you weren’t a hundred percent safe. I couldn’t walk you into danger or watch someone put a needle full of drugs in your arm. I couldn’t rest.”
“Well, good, because the piss smell kept me up and I was hungry. Speaking of, I’m going to eat more oxtail stew, and you’re going to tell me something that makes me want to walk out. Except I won’t.”
She took a spoonful of stew and glanced at me, so sure her feelings could survive any revelation. I had so many wonderfully juicy stories that wouldn’t even half nudge her out the door. So many others would require a discussion that would ruin the evening.
I asked, “Are sexual escapades on the table?”
“Sure.” She looked into her bowl. Maybe that was a bad idea. I didn’t want her to get bent out of shape. If she told me a story like the one I intended to tell her, I’d get bent out of shape.
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“As long as your wife isn’t in there.”
“Why? Besides the fact that she’s not the escapade type?”
“I’m not going to pretend your ex-wife’s my favorite person ever. But to me, what goes on sexually in a marriage, you don’t talk about. So—” she put her hands over her ears “—la la la, don’t want to hear it.”
In the five minutes I had to decide what to tell her, I’d prepared a story of bedding three women at once. It was absolutely true, terribly unsexy, and funny all at once. But she’d thrown me by respecting a woman who’d lied to her and caused her hurt, by honoring a vow she’d had no part of. Monica deserved better than a canned story I’d told a hundred times at the club.
I took her wrists and pulled her hands from her ears. She smiled at me.
“I agree,” I said. “You’re safe from my marriage bed. But not the rest.” I took my hands away and picked up my wine glass, taking a deep breath. “There’s a difference between a dominant and a pig.”
“Really?”
“My father,” I said, leaning forward, “is a pig.” She looked as though she was ready to choke on her oxtail stew. “You all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I sense an example coming?”
“I hit puberty early,” I said. “By thirteen, I was done. Close to my fourteenth birthday, my father wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten laid yet.”
She chewed, then gazed up me with those big, chocolate disks. “Okay?”
“He set me up on a date with a girl. Woman. Rachel. She was a couple of years older than me. That was my first time. And guess what? Turns out, she was his mistress.”
She swallowed hard. “How old was she?”
“The math you just did in your head was correct.”
“Wow. He whored out his underage mistress?”
“To his underage son. Like I said. Pig. And you should see the look on your face.” Her heartbeat was practically audible. She pushed food around and I worked to control my nerves.
She sighed heavily. “Honestly, I didn’t expect you to even have a story like that.”
“You think rich people don’t have sick shit in their houses?”
She raised her eyebrows and swirled her spoon in her stew. “Something like that.”
I laughed. Partly because I was nervous about voicing a fragment of the story, and partly because I was relieved she hadn’t run away. Not yet, at least.
She put her spoon down and sipped her wine. “Did you see her again?”
“I did but on different terms. It was messy for a while.” I cleared my throat. “She died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. How?”
“Car accident. I was about sixteen when it happened.”
I should have shut up way before mentioning the accident. If she looked into it, I was deeply fucked. So I stopped talking. Just stopped.
She waited, slid off her chair, stepped over to me, and put her hands on my face. “You know you have to tell me the whole thing, right?”
“There is no more.” I put my hand up her skirt until I felt the lacy top of her stocking. “You’re going to have to take the dress off for where we’re going next.”
“Upstairs?”
I put my fingers under the lace and up the garter straps. “Nope.”
“Where?”
“Have you finished dinner?”
“Yes.”
I pulled her down, kissing her hard. She tasted of lovingly made Filipino food and cold white wine. I wanted her all over again, but we had someplace to be.
Chapter 7
MONICA
I slipped into my jeans, keeping my fancy underwear on. I felt filthy, sexy, sensual with garters under denim. When I reached the front foyer, I found the door open and a loud rumbling in the driveway.
Jonathan straddled a matte black rocket of a motorcycle with red touches at the rims. The back seat was suspended by nothing but air and the promise of velocity.
“Well,” I said as I clopped down the porch stairs in my heels, “is this new or is it some old thing you found in the back of the garage?”
“I got rid of the Mercedes and saw this.” He handed me a helmet in the same matte black as the bike. “You’ve ridden before?”
“Yeah.” I slipped on the helmet. I’d dirtbiked with Kevin in the Sequoias until mud covered me from knee to toe and I walked like a cowboy coming home from a week on a feisty mare. Once, in freshman year, Ivan Ikanovitch took me out to Ventura on h
is new BMW. Needless to say, I had to take a cab home.
“Let’s go then, little goddess. This trip usually takes forty minutes, and we have thirty five.”
I slid onto the back seat and put my arms around his waist. “You shoulda let me recite ‘Invictus’ as fast as I wanted. We’d be on time.”
The gate slid open as if by his thought waves alone, and we took off, my legs clenching the seat and my arms clutching his waist. When we stopped at a light, I heard his voice in my head.
“You’re cutting off my circulation.”
The clarity of his voice was shocking, and he turned to me, tapping the helmet.
“There are microphones in here?” He nodded. “Fancy.”
The light changed, and we took off. We didn’t talk much as we zipped onto the five, turning onto the 110 freeway. I tried not to squeal when he went really fast since he could hear me. Instead, I leaned on him, enjoying the softness of his leather jacket and the way it creaked against mine. Even though it was early November, the air was warm as it whipped under my clothes.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. He was fourteen when his father loaned him his mistress. His first sexual experience was coated in familial ties and discomfort. He went to the institution when he was sixteen, right about when she was killed. He’d given me a portion of the story. His time in the institution had something to do with his father’s promiscuity and penchant for young girls, as well as his absurd expectations of his son’s virility.
I was still missing some puzzle pieces. Something was very seriously off, but his explanation was a start, and I felt a sort of relief knowing that eventually, when he was ready, he’d fill in the blanks.
We traveled eighty miles an hour past the industrial tinkertoy skyline and outlet malls with their blindingly bright, sky-high screens, blasting high above neighborhoods still burned out from the riots, and back to a middle-class residential zone.
I slipped my hand under his jacket, then under his shirt. I felt his taut stomach and the little hairs on it, the warmth of his skin making me feel safe and cared for.
“Are you making a pass at me?” he asked in my head.
“Not at this speed.”
“Okay, because I’m having you in a couple of hours.”
“I know.” I leaned my head on his back. “You’re a big ho.”
“Only for you these days.”
I hoped my sigh wasn’t audible through the microphone. I knew I was choosing to believe him, and that choice was conscious, and thus, fallible. I knew he could walk out on me at any minute, for any reason. If he really was over his wife, he could look for a more permanent mate with whom he had more in common, like money, and social standing, and similar friends and interests.
But I chose, maybe unwisely, to believe he wanted me for more than a short time because it made me happy to think it.
I was screwed.
He turned off the freeway at Carson, and after a few more quick pivots, he slowed in front of a grassy, floodlit field where a blimp was parked.
“We made it,” he said, pulling up to the chain-link fence around the field’s perimeter. A man in a white shirt and vinyl jacket approached us with a clipboard. Jonathan took off his helmet. His hair was a complete wreck, a school of wild-armed starfish backlit by floodlights. He fingerbrushed it and faced the man with the clipboard.
“Mister Drazen?”
“Yeah.”
“You just made it. Park the bike in the lot to the left. Have fun.”
“How are they doing?” asked Jonathan. I took off my helmet. I could only imagine what my hair looked like. A bunch of broken strings in the same backlighting, no doubt. And the little braid I’d left coming from my part probably looked like a dreadlock.
“Down two in the second. Having trouble getting men on base,” the man with the clipboard said.
Jonathan shook his head and started the bike again. We cruised to the center of the lot and parked by a sheet metal trailer held up by a cinderblock foundation. He put the kickstand down and leaned the bike over until it was stable.
“What was that?” I asked, dismounting first. “The game? They’re losing already?”
He got off and set the bike straight. “Apparently.”
“Are we going on the blimp?”
“If you’re good.”
“And we’re going to Dodger Stadium? Maybe? I don’t want to assume, but the second blimp always comes about the fifth inning.” I was trying to keep my shit together, but I’d lived my whole life in the Stadium’s backyard and had never found a way to even get into a playoff game. When I knew the right people, the team had been in the basement. During good years, I’d been hanging with people who didn’t “do” sports because organized team activities were uncreative, uncivilized, and boorish.
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to see the game from the sky if you move that tight little ass. They won’t wait.”
I jumped on him. I couldn’t help it. I’m only made of flesh and blood, and that blood is Dodger blue. I kissed his face and wrapped my legs around him. He caught me, hitched me up by the backs of the knees, and started for the blimp. The white noise was deafening, and before he let me down, I said in his ear, “Thank you.”
He took my hand, smiling as if he was pleased to see me so happy, and we ran across the grass to the huge machine. It was bigger than I’d imagined. Massive. Overwhelming. A tire company’s name was written across it in letters two or three times my height. I couldn’t hear any of the men who greeted us, but I put on my customer service smile. In this case, it couldn’t have been more genuine.
We were hustled into a gondola with six seats facing front. The two at the windshield were pilot and copilot. Jonathan and I were guided in behind that, and behind us were two men who appeared to be businessmen. We were surrounded by windows, but Jonathan made sure I got the seat closest to a view. I jumped in. I wanted to talk to him, but it was simply too loud. The copilot gave us headphones with mikes on them.
I heard Jonathan say, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Baby,” I said, smiling until I felt my face might snap in two, “I’m a sure thing tonight.”
Everyone in the cabin cracked up. Of course they could all hear me. Jonathan put his arm around me and pulled me to him, kissing my forehead while he laughed. I buried my head in his chest.
“Don’t worry, miss,” said the pilot, his voice loud and clear. “We get that a lot.” After a pause, he continued. “I’m Larry. This here is my copilot, Rango. We’ll be heading for East Los Angeles in a few seconds, set to arrive at Dodger Stadium in about forty minutes. Hold on, takeoff can be a little jarring for first timers. Buckle in.”
The noise got even louder. I found my buckles and strap. Jonathan helped me click in, then he took my hand. Seconds later, I felt as if I was being launched from a rocket. Larry turned a wooden steering wheel set between his seat and Rango’s.
“I’ll have the game on,” Rango chimed in. “We’re in the bottom of the fourth against the New York Yankees. Cashen is pitching for the Yanks as we speak.”
I closed my eyes and heard Jonathan’s voice. “Open your eyes. These flights are hard to get, even for me.”
I opened them and looked at him in the darkened cabin. He touched my cheek and smiled, and I felt protected and secure. Even if it was an illusion, knowing he was there made me feel less like I was shooting out a cannon and more like I was on a fun trip I wouldn’t have dreamed up for myself.
The city spread beneath us in a blanket of lights made of a plaid of streets, freeways, and floodlit parks. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. We were low enough to see cars and people but high enough to turn them into dots of velocity and intention. Everyone was headed somewhere, and we were above, passing in the wind.
The game wasn’t going well for my team. I listened without discussion as another inning went by with three men str
anded on base, a pitcher who threw balls that were fouled off until I knew he must be exhausted, and a beaner that may have left star hitter Jose Inuego with a concussion.
I felt Jonathan leaning over me to see the window. He rested his chin on my shoulder, then his lips landed on my neck. Leaning there, we looked out the window together. The gondola chilled as the minutes went by, and though we had jackets, I put my hand on his and found his fingers icy. I moved one of his hands between my knees to warm it and folded the other in mine. We stayed like that, looking out the window, his chest to my back, his chin on my neck, and his hands warmed by my body, until I saw Elysian Park. I probably could have picked my house out from there.
“Look!” I sounded like a kid. “I can see it!”
It seemed to take as long to get over the stadium from the moment I saw it as it took for us to get to Los Angeles from Carson. Another blimp passed us, heading away from the game. Larry and Rango waved at the pilots. I was filled with contentment and a feeling of rightness, of being a part of something bigger than myself. I’d only felt that during orchestra practice in college, and only when everything was going right. The percussionist was spot on, the conductor spoke in a manual language as easy to understand as the written word, and we all followed as if lifted by the same tide.
As the feeling slipped away, I wanted nothing more than to recapture it. I pulled my headphones off and faced Jonathan. His eyes were visible from the lights on the pilot’s dashboard. He pulled his microphone out of the way. I kissed him, and I didn’t care who saw. I molded my lips to his and fed him my tongue. He took his hand from between my knees and put it to my cheek, warmed from my body, gentle to the touch. I extended that feeling of rightness for another minute until the gondola seemed to blaze with light.
I opened my eyes. We were right over the stadium. I took one last look at Jonathan and mouthed the words, Sure thing.
He mouthed back, I know, and I smiled.
I’d never seen a game like that before, and I found it disconcerting initially. I was used to television, where I could see every twitch and nod of the pitcher, and live games from the bleachers, where I could tell the direction of the ball from the sound it made coming off the bat. From the blimp, the players looked like white flowers on a perfect lawn.
