by Alice Bell
He cleared his throat. “It’s already done. Starting next month. Here’s the new schedule,” he handed me the letter he’d been holding.
“But that’s next week,” I felt the sharp edge of the envelope.
“I tried to tell you this morning. I wanted to explain how I came to the decision.”
“You invited me to dinner,” I said.
* * *
Rain poured down the windshield. It was hard to see the road. Several times I felt the car sliding. After I pulled into the garage, I waited a moment before getting out. I felt hollow.
Inside, I stripped down to my slip, leaving my wet clothes in a pile on the floor. I dug into a jar of almond butter with a spoon. As I licked the spoon, I eyed the envelope I’d left unopened on the table.
Forget it. Forget you, Mr. Stroop.
In the bathroom, I took down my hair and brushed it.
Back at the dining table, I ate a macaroon. Mr. Stroop’s cruel missive bore his special stupid seal. I stared at it, before tearing it open.
It was bad. Worse than bad. My first class, sophomore English, was at eight. In the morning. I would have to find a way to sleep at night, like a normal person. Anxiety pricked the back of my neck. I’d been down this road before, in college, and landed in the hospital. From sleep deprivation.
Two more required classes followed at nine and ten. Then back to my usual schedule from one to four. Stroop and Georgie didn’t even have the decency to give me a regular nine to five. Georgie had cleverly unloaded her early classes. But that couldn’t be the only reason she’d sabotaged me.
I crumpled the schedule into a tight ball and threw it across the room.
I opened the cupboard above the sink and got down my bottle of Seagram’s. I took a swallow and shuddered. It tasted better with 7-Up. The clock on the stove read almost nine.
I picked up my dice, two burnished pink cubes with tiny rhinestones. My mother had brought them back from Vegas when Javier took her to the House of Blues. They were the last thing she had given me. It soothed me to rub the cubes together so they made a soft clicking noise.
I rolled an eight. Not as good as a seven or a nine but better than a six. No matter the number, even snake-eyes; you couldn’t roll again for a better number. There had to be rules. Otherwise, I could spend the rest of my life rolling dice. And I loved rules. As long as I was the one who made them.
Before leaving the house, I teased and ratted up my hair, so it was big and high, securing it with Aqua Net. I found a black dress with a tight lace bodice. I put on black nail polish over the sparkly blue that had begun to chip.
Outside, the air was fresh from the rain. Clouds drifted past the rising moon.
I always went to the same bar down by the river. It was dark and grungy and the bands that played there were dark and grungy too. It was the only way I could get through the long nights.
3. Devon
THE TUNNELS beneath the city had been closed for half a century. Public safety, they said, but I was hardly part of the public. When I discovered the passage beneath my building, I gave the steel door a few good kicks and I was in.
The tunnel went from China Town to the boardwalk. Tonight when I came out the air was balmy. On the beach two girls juggled fire. Flames shimmered on the water behind them.
Music clanged through an open door. “I.D.,” the bouncer crossed his arms to make his muscles bulge. I slipped past him when he blinked.
I felt her presence, before I saw her. Ruby. I’d swiped a book of matches from her coffee table, last night. The name of the bar was printed on the cover.
She sat alone. Her hair was teased up like a red cloud. Her neck was long and breakable.
She gasped when I suddenly appeared beside her. “Hey,” I said. “Remember me?” Again, I was struck by how pretty she was, even dressed in black and looking very Goth.
“Oh, hi-i-i,” she breathed, something people did in books I hadn’t realized was possible.
A guitar shrieked as it was unplugged. When a bleached blonde in tight jeans brushed against me, I gave her the eye. She eyed me back. There was plenty of time for that later. I turned back to Ruby.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she said. Normally, it would be a line, but she sounded truly surprised.
“I don’t come here,” I shrugged. “Why? Is it your favorite haunt?” She did kind of haunt a place.
“I come here every night,” she said.
“Every single night?”
She lowered her gaze.
I wondered if guys hit on her or if she was too weird. “You must have heard some good lines,” I said.
“No…” she stirred her drink and gave me a shy glance. “If I was going to use a line, I would quote from a great book. And if they didn’t get it…well, then at least I would know. And I wouldn’t have to go to all the trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“You know. Of talking.”
I never had to talk to anyone. “Okay, let’s hear it,” I said. “Give me a line.”
She flushed. Her lips moved ever so slightly. I swear she was counting under her breath. She stopped at eight. Something wrong hovered in the air. And then she went into character, putting her hand to her breast, imploring me with her incredible black ringed eyes. “Kiss me. But don’t look at me. I don’t want to see your lying face,” her lips quirked. “You miserable conniving bitch, Catherine,” she broke into giggles.
I sidled closer. “I don’t remember Heathcliff calling Catherine a bitch,” I wanted to put my hand on the back of her neck.
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Your turn,” she said.
What came to me was the opening of Tristessa, which I had committed to memory last night in her living room. I quoted word for word. The rest of the world fell away. It was just the two of us, until I came to the end of the longest run-on sentence known to man.
“I love that book,” she said. Her eyes were so huge and gorgeous and desperate, I thought they could swallow me. She was like a wounded animal, caught in my snare. A look of panic crossed her face. She checked her watch. “I—I have to go home.”
What did she see with those big eyes that warned her against me?
I touched her neck, brushing my thumb against her pulse. Her skin was hot. When she met my gaze, I remembered. For just a second, I remembered how life felt when it was painful and fragile and fleeting.
“Goodnight,” I whispered.
4. Ruby
I KEPT glancing in my rearview mirror, sure he would follow me. And I didn’t even know if he had a car. He hadn’t the night we met. In fact, he had a way of appearing out of nowhere.
When a pair of headlights got close, my hands turned sweaty inside my gloves. The speedometer crept up past fifty. I was in a residential zone where the limit was twenty-five. I had a phobia of police officers and was afraid of getting a ticket but I kept going, faster and faster.
In his beautiful eyes I had seen something that scared me.
I waited for the gate to open, counting to eight forward and backward. It was hard to catch my breath. My ears rang. The headlights had disappeared blocks ago but I expected Devon to come around the corner at any moment, like in the movies.
Once I was safe inside, with the doors locked, I began to doubt myself. There had been a few instances in the past where certain people had struck me as villainous, such as my first college roommate. She was like Georgie in the way she cut me with her sidelong glances, and hid things from me and snickered with her friends when I walked past. It was hard to believe it was entirely in my imagination but Dr. Ess said it was.
I kept to my routine, lighting the fire and candles, dimming the chandelier so the house was cast in a warm glow.
I perused my book shelves, looking for just the right book to take my mind off Devon. I had so many books simply because I couldn’t resist them. Each one promised a new world; an escape from my own for a little while.
My gaze landed on my valise. I dug throu
gh it, wondering what had happened to my copy of Tristessa. I kept seeing Devon’s face, the way his lips had shaped the words as he described the cab ride in the rain, the grim beauty of the night and of Tristessa high on morphine.
Who’d ever read Tristessa besides me?
I found the book on the floor where it must have fallen. I snatched it up. My eyes scanned the first page. He’d recited it almost exactly. Maybe, in fact, word for word. He’d said lugubrious and there it was on the page, along with Citlapol, which fell from his tongue with ease. He’d even rolled the R when he said Tristessa.
Something cold sliced through me.
I sat on the edge of the sofa. My eyes kept probing the shadows. I went to the kitchen and got a drink of water. Staring through the window, I realized what I’d seen in Devon’s eyes—the same twisted longing I felt, searching into the dark.
Deep down, I had yearned for him to follow me home.
* * *
The next morning, when I rolled a seven, before rushing out the door, I thought it might be my lucky day, until I saw Georgie’s yellow Mini Cooper parked in my space. Bitch.
I got to my classroom seven minutes before the bell, as I’d planned. But it was too much time. I did my nails, taking off the black polish. I put on a coat of pink. Still, I was left with three minutes. It felt like forever, sitting at my desk in the quiet.
Sexy images raced through my mind. Let’s face it, I thought. Henry was ugly next to Devon and Henry had rejected me. Devon could have anyone so what was I doing daydreaming about him? A headache thrummed behind my eyes. I dug through my desk, looking for an aspirin.
My first class spent the entire period writing an essay and there I was again, thinking.
I had plenty of work—papers to grade, essay topics to dream up, books to assign. I forced myself to focus on the paper in front of me. When I wrote a comment in the margin, my hand trembled.
I checked my watch, and waited. “Seven minutes,” I announced.
A girl at the back of the class made a derisive sound, standing up and hoisting her backpack to her shoulder. She slapped her essay on my desk. “Can I leave? If I’m done already?” She wore large red-framed glasses and her brown hair in a side ponytail.
“Sure,” I said but I was afraid she would be sorry. If she hadn’t seemed so agitated, I would have made her sit down and read over her essay.
The rest of the class used all forty-seven minutes. Most of my students seemed nervous when they dropped off their booklets. I had asked if Poe’s poem, Annabel Lee, was about Everlasting Love or Obsession. There was no right or wrong answer, obviously.
I peeked inside a few of the essays to see which view was most popular. Everlasting Love seemed to be winning. I felt gratified. I hoped to show these kids the kind of world where love conquered and souls entwined forever, even if it only happened in books.
Before my next class, I went to the Girl’s room down the hall. When I pushed open the door, I discovered Georgie brushing her hair in front of the mirror. I wasn’t about to pee in the same room with Georgie.
“Ruby,” she said, before I could escape. She caught my gaze in the mirror.
“Georgie,” I said.
She turned around and dropped her brush into a shiny leather bag hanging off her arm. “Look, since we’re here, I should tell you something. Woman to woman.”
My stomach cramped. The air in the bathroom was stale and the water in the toilets had a sulfur smell. I could see tiny black stubs above the bridge of Georgie’s nose where she had plucked out a uni-brow.
“Henry told me a secret about you,” her voice lilted on ‘secret’.
My throat got small. I thought of my worst secret. How did Henry Thorne know? But I knew how. Somewhere in cyberspace there was a file and it was right there in plain sight for any twelve year old hacker.
Shame crept over me.
I took in the cruel flicker in Georgie’s eyes, the faint line on her jaw where her make-up didn’t blend. I felt unreal, as if I could float away.
She brought me back to earth. “Henry says you kiss like a fish,” she giggled, the way she had behind the partition. She moved her mouth like a fish and made a sucking noise.
* * *
My Adult Literacy class was sparsely attended. Most of the students had jobs and kids and it was a struggle for them. I felt a surge of affection for the nine people who sat under the florescent lights, going through the tasks I gave them when they could have been at home with their families.
I found myself reaching out to shake their hands, or pat them on the arm, as they went out the door. Soon, Georgie would take over and I hadn’t said a word. I couldn’t bear to break the news.
In the parking lot, the air was fresh on my skin.
I am a terrible kisser. What did it matter in the whole scheme of things?
As I counted the steps to my car, I became aware of something unusual. I hadn’t noticed it before. There were only three cars left in the lot, one of them mine, the other a silver Volvo and there, clear on the other side, by the street—Georgie’s Mini.
She had moved it. So she must have left and come back.
Why? What was she doing here so late?
A wave of nausea came over me. Not because Georgie lurked somewhere on campus but because of the idea that came to me. My mind circled it, coming close, jumping back, as if it was a coiled snake.
Don’t.
Yes.
Do it.
No.
The sun had left a strip of pink on the horizon and all around the sky deepened to the darkest blue. Above me, lights exploded, big and white. A lone coyote howled. The sound careened off the rooftops of the city.
I loaded my valise into the car, freeing myself for movement, an act of premeditation. I heard my breath in my ears, a surreal soft panting and the other sound—the scrape of metal against metal.
Then I was running.
5. Devon
I LAY in bed, watching a spider traverse its web. I hadn’t stopped thinking of Ruby since I met her, which was barely three days ago and no time at all when your life might be endless. She had awakened something in me.
I thought about Tristessa too, the beautiful junkie, how she lit candles for the Madonna. (I pictured her as Ruby.) I liked the way the last line of the book broke off mid-sentence and how the narrator said his life was a legend because it was his.
The taco stands and Mexico City slums reminded me of my trip back up to the States, traveling at night because daylight made me sick.
It felt like years ago now, though I got confused about time. I had come to on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, where a woman kissed me. It was a distant memory, dark and surreal. I remembered being cold. Her kiss was warm.
At first, so many things made me sick. Until, one night, on the long road up to Tikal, I was seduced in the back of the bus. I consumed a complete stranger in the height of ecstasy. She was my first victim. Afterwards, I ran through the jungle, feeling like a rock star who’d snorted lines of cocaine off the bodies of starlets.
Last night, Ruby leaked energy all over the place, a big beautiful mess. After she left the bar, I was full of strength. I walked with the moon for miles, watching it dip in and out of the clouds.
I thought of how she laughed at her own joke, and how there was a bitter edge lacing her tone when she said ‘bitch,’ as if she was jealous of a character in a book. I felt how easily her emotions shifted, and how powerfully they raged, like an electrical storm.
Now, I stretched, still charged.
After dressing in a clean T-shirt and jeans, I moved silently through the streets.
An old phone booth caught my attention. It sat under a green street lamp outside the 7-Eleven. The door gaped open and a piece of paper was tacked inside. I reached in and tore it off.
LOST CAT.
It was the same photo on top of Ruby’s piano. I recognized the cat’s disgruntled expression. His name was Alceste. Poor bastard. There was a phone number to ca
ll, which I took as a sign. I threw the paper away. Ruby’s number and the cat’s mean face were etched in my mind. Alceste and I would cross paths, at some point, if he was still alive. I knew the city intimately.
I got to the boardwalk as Ruby was leaving the bar, wearing a short black cocktail dress and knee-high boots. Just seeing her gave me a jolt. She veered. A smoker in a dirty wife-beater broke from his group to follow her.
I made my presence known, smacking the guy upside the head. “Get lost,” I said.
He gaped at me and trotted back to his friends.
“Hey,” I called to Ruby, catching up to her. “You’re not driving, are you?” I sounded like your average concerned citizen, as if drinking and driving was the worst sin I could imagine.
She put her hand to her throat, a protective gesture that turned me on.
With both hands, I braced myself against the wall, trapping her. I ran my gaze down the length of her, taking in her short skirt. When our eyes met, her pupils were huge and black. Her lips parted and I breathed in the sweetness of whisky and torment on her breath. A new cut shimmered on the surface—humiliation.
I couldn’t resist touching her creamy thigh, fingering the tiny buckle of her stocking strap. Desire overpowered her fear. I lowered my head to graze the crook of her neck with my lips.
She stilled. She was so damaged; I could feel it, like a slow burn. She had tragic secrets.
When she opened her eyes, her pupils had gone back to normal. Reality flooded in, a rush of cigarette smoke mingling with human voices, bass thumping in the bar, the red glow of the neon sign above us.
She grasped the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Kiss me,” she said.
“What?”
“Kiss me,” she said, again. Color warmed her cheeks, making her childlike. I had a sudden memory of a girl from my past, a girl with long legs and soft skin. I couldn’t remember her face. Or her name.
