by Cynthia Dane
Cher disappears into my bathroom. At least there are no firecrackers lit beneath her ass. Dare I believe the bleeding times are over? When I asked her for the millionth time, “Are you sure you don’t want anything, Princess?” I got a spiel about how she doesn’t let anyone touch her down there when she’s courting the crimson queen. Color me surprised to know women can go for that long. I then got a lengthy description about heavy flows, light flows, “brown stuff,” and mucus, mucus, vagina discharge mucus. I am now the most educated man you know when it comes to the biological functions of the human vagina.
Yet I would still love to get to intimately know a few of those other functions…
I almost dare to intrude upon her morning ritual to ask her to shower with me. At the very least, I’d like to see that naked body getting wet in my steamy shower. Yowza. You know, I got rid of my morning wood, yet here I am acting like a caveman again. Few women get this reaction out of me. I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason I’m attracted to her is because of how unobtainable she really is.
I’m not supposed to want her. She’s a mark. A tigress who plays with her prey before snapping their necks and devouring them. Every inch of her is a trap. She lures me in with promises of mind-blowing sex, but I know that deep, deep down she either resents it or… worse… she doesn’t feel anything at all. I’m another guy she has to fuck to get what she wants. Cher Lieberman no longer knows the difference between orgasming for pleasure and climaxing for her own health.
So I oscillate between wanting mindless sex with her, since we know it doesn’t matter – and wanting to shake her by the shoulders and demand she tell me the secret to her fucked-up unhappiness.
There has to be something. Something that triggered this behavior and turned her into the black widow who leaves men sobbing in front of their families and chucking their grandmothers’ engagement rings into the Puget Sound.
That something will probably be the death of me. We’ll find out if I die with my dick somewhere inside of her. That’s the only way I want to go.
***
“A rich guy broke your heart when you were barely out of high school.” I mix a generous helping of paneer with my biryani rice. The spice level at this Indian buffet isn’t as high as I might like, but I get it. When you’re dealing with Pacific Northwestern palates, you’re in the business of keeping heat levels… low.
Cher doesn’t seem to mind. When she said she wanted Indian cuisine after a long morning and early afternoon of shopping, I knew the place to take her. There’s this well-known Indian buffet right here in Seattle’s heart, Belltown. For a reasonable rate, you can get all-you-can-eat Indian staples that fill your stomach to the point of popping an antacid. The place is quaint enough, even if it doesn’t “pop” like so many of the trendy restaurants around here.
Right. We were having a heated discussion about what turned her into a bitch.
“Nope.” Her freshly-baked nan dips into the bowl of paneer we share. “Never had my heart broken, actually. Isn’t it funny that you thought you’d be the first one to do it?”
“I’ve got it.” My fingers snap as I ignore what she said. “Your mother trained you in the fine arts of sugar-babying. She was a professional sugar baby herself back in the… let me guess… late eighties. Is your father really a CEO somewhere? Ooh, a rich dentist?”
“One of those things is somewhat right, but only because you got lucky with that ludicrous guess.” Cher takes a tender bite of her nan. Her aviator sunglasses perch atop her head, hair now back down and loose around her shoulders. She’s wearing a baggy pink T-shirt that tucks into the same black skirt she was wearing when I rammed it in her for the first time. (Ah, such sweet and spicy memories.) Big plastic bracelets jangle against her wrist. Teardrop earrings brush against her long throat. She isn’t wearing as much makeup today. This is a woman who wanted to dress comfortably for her big day out with me, the man who insisted on tagging along with her modest shopping spree. The only thing missing is a necklace around that lovely neck. Do you think she’ll let me leave a trail of hickies there? How about a pearl necklace? She seems the type. “My dad’s a podiatrist. A successful one, at that.”
“Buuuut…”
“My mom’s never been a sugar baby, as far as I know. Shit, I’m pretty sure she was a virgin before she met my dad. I would bet money on him being the only man she’s ever slept with. How’s them apples?”
“Drat.” I drum my fingers against the table. “You’re a sociopath who gets her jollies fucking over men. Since you’re incapable of understanding empathy or most social cues you haven’t forced yourself to learn, it’s easy for you to use your perceived beauty to…”
“Nope.” Cher continues to chow down on her nan. “I’ve had therapists. A lot of them thought I was fucked up, but never once did they bring up the possibility of sociopathy. Probably because I am capable of empathy. For people who, you know, deserve it. Like refugees, abuse victims, and survivors of animal cruelty.”
I sit back in my seat. “Because you matured early, you quickly learned the value of your appearance. Girls didn’t want to be your friend in school, but you always got boyfriends easily.”
She cocks one wary eyebrow at me. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“So I’m right?”
Cher snorts. “I never wanted for a boyfriend, no, but I had friends growing up. Guy friends, girl friends… they come and go with life, as is usual. I’m sort of transitioning between friend groups right now. Trying to decide if I want one bestie, or a whole squad.”
I honestly can’t tell if she’s joking. Is she joking? Somebody please tell me.
“Honestly, why are we talking about me so much?” Her red lips purse around her glass of water. She puts it back down with a small pop of her jaw. Ice? Between her teeth? Thanks, oral fixation, now I’m thinking about how well she swallows cock. And other things. Right here in front of my paneer and biryani rice. In this public place. In front of these nice strangers.
Ahem.
“I’d much rather crack the code behind Drew Benton.” Cher leans over her plate, elbow on the table and fingers playing with the fine strands of her hair. “What makes this rich playboy so eager to ruin a woman’s life? A woman he doesn’t know. Because, for all he knows, it’s a bastard of an abusive ex behind the will to destroy someone’s life. At least I’m not intentionally hurting people. My exes willingly gave me money, paid my rent, and offered me gifts. What do you do? Go out of your way to extract revenge on behalf of other men.”
Who whittled her such a sharp spear? She’s plunged it right into my gut. There goes my blood and entrails, pooling on the floor of this nice establishment. You know, I eat here about once a month. Sometimes by myself! What is the nice Indian family going to think when they walk out here and see me white and blue on the floor, my dried blood congealed beneath my body? Will they take a picture for posterity? A picture of Cher stepping on my body so she can reclaim her deadly spear?
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“Try me.”
“I mean…” I clear my throat. I suddenly don’t have the appetite for my Indian food. “Guess it started while I was in college. I had a buddy who got massively fucked up by an evil chick who thought it would be funny to make her fall in love with her only to dump him. She never intended to marry him after school, which was what she originally told him she wanted to do after she lured him into her web of lies.” My words make Cher roll her eyes. She may be unimpressed, but what I say is the truth. My best friend, dear old Hank – yes, that was his real name, because he hated Henry with the fire of a burning sun – fell in with the wrong girl. We all knew she was trouble, but he wouldn’t listen to us. The girl was so spoiled that it meant nothing to her that the only way she could amuse herself was by playing with others’ feelings. “When she dumped him on his graduation day, I decided to get back at her on his behalf. You have to understand…” I hold up my hand before Cher can protest what i
t was like being twenty-one and watching my friend slowly waste away from depression. “Hank was in a bad way, and this girl was seriously bad news. Luckily, I knew she had the hots for me. She tried multiple times to hook up with me while she was with Hank. So, while Hank stayed in bed for a whole month, I invited her to a party I threw at my family’s summer house.”
“Where you fucked and dumped her in front of everyone, I’m assuming.”
“I fucked her, yes.” I don’t go into the details. Like how I fucked her as if she were a worthless woman not worth the label human being. It wasn’t my proudest moment. Everything I did with her was fueled by anger for my friend, who refused to answer my texts and calls. His mom was always blowing up my phone, though, telling me how worried she was about her only child. The man had just graduated college and couldn’t be assed to go to the job he had lined up. He lost that job, you know. He was bound to become one of Portland’s hottest architects, and he was too depressed to remember he had his whole life ahead of him. “Long story short, I made sure she was good and smitten with my looks, dick, and body before humiliating her in front of everyone we knew. It was our senior year, you see, and I wanted to ensure she would be mortified until the day she either graduated or dropped out.”
“Dare I ask what you did?”
I glance around us and lower my voice. Cher leans in closer, some of her hair falling into her paneer. “I got us nice and toasted the night before the first day of classes. The campus was crawling with froshies at their orientation and seniors getting ahead of the game. I may have had her so blazed I convinced her to engage in some late-night hanky-panky in the great outdoors.”
Cher continues to methodically chew her food.
“And we were nasty. Ahem.”
She swallows, still unperturbed.
“After she was passed out, I left her there. By then the sun was coming up, so I barely had enough time to drag my naked ass back to my on-campus apartment. Half an hour later, she wakes up to everyone laughing at her lying naked and hungover in the middle of campus. Never saw her again after that.”
Finally, Cher shakes her head, but it’s hardly in admonishment. “Stone cold. Was your friend vindicated?”
I wait until she’s well into her next bite before responding. “He killed himself the next day. He never heard about it.”
She stops chewing. That’s the only response I get, until, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well… so am I. He was a good guy who didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Unlike that nasty bitch, right?”
“Figured you’d be on her side.” I barely think about the food I’m consuming. I’m too busy thinking about Hank and how quickly he slid into that darkness. What was he thinking that last month of his life? How he would never love again? How all women were only out to use and abuse him? That he would rather die than take another breath? Obviously, I’ll never really know. I’ll never know if there was anything I could do to save him, to drag him out of that hell. I didn’t find out about his death until a week later, when I contacted his mother and found out the funeral already happened. Best I can do now is visit his grave down in Silverton once in a while.
“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Cher says. “I don’t know either of these people. She sounds like a bitch, yeah, but your friend probably had other shit going on in his life. She might have pushed him over the edge, but…” She stops, aware that I’m not finding this amusing. “Sorry. Your friend didn’t deserve to die. I’m not convinced that girl deserved what you did to her, either. She’s not responsible for his death.”
“Yeah, well… you wanted to know what got me into my line of work? That was it. Was in a pretty bad spot for a while after his death. Had another buddy ask me to get back at his ex like the way I got back at her, and… one thing led to another…”
“Now you have a successful business humiliating and ruining women who had the nerve to break up with men.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“Sure.” Still unimpressed, Cher sniffs up whatever’s clogging her nose and pulls more paneer onto her plate. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
“Unlike you, right?” When she gives me the eye, I explain, “you still won’t tell me what led you down your path of unrighteousness.”
“Maybe I don’t have a reason.” Cher shrugs, as if that’s all there is to it. “Maybe this is how I came to survive this crazy world. Maybe you can’t understand what it’s like being a woman.”
There are a million testy things I want to say. She doesn’t have a right to put this all on her gender. Not when it comes to the pain I’ve seen in the faces of some of these guys who come to me for some sliver of justice. You can’t arrest a woman for treating you like crap. I mean, you can if she technically broke the law, but most of them don’t. Most of them get away with being stone-cold bitches who don’t care what happens to you or your money.
Yes, I know… the more I sit here trying to explain myself, the crazier I sound. Suppose it is kinda crazy. Yet after my grief for Hank faded and I realized that this may not be the best course of action for my life, I had stopped caring. This was what I was good at. Not whatever it was my family wanted to do. In my twenties, it was my way of getting back at the world. Striking my own path. Doing what I wanted and going about as I cared. For every woman I was paid to sleep with, there was one who was in my bed for the hell of it.
Now I look in these blissfully brown eyes and wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do. Cher has become both. I’ve been paid to break her. I was committed to splitting her apart, body and soul.
Now, I’m not sure what the hell is going on.
Cher pulls out her phone and scrolls through something on her screen. Yup. Right in the middle of our conversation.
“Whatever,” I mutter, going back to my food.
“Hang on a sec.” She glances up at me, then back at her phone. “Says here I can get some of the weed I like two blocks over. Now I know what I want for dessert.”
“Weed,” I repeat. “If that’s what you really want, I’ve got some in my…”
“Yes, I saw what you have. I don’t care for that, though. You smoke what you want, but I’m getting what I like.”
Can I help it if I’m surprised by this change in topic? One minute we’re talking about my dead friend, and the next? Marijuana. Will wonders never cease with this woman? “Far be it from me to stop you from getting what you want.”
Her sly grin punches me right in the chest. “Good,” Cher says with a tawdry purr. “He’s finally starting to learn.”
It being the Pacific Northwest, I already smell pot in the air before we step into a dispensary.
Chapter 19
CHER
Go ahead and guess what I’m like when I’m high.
Go ahead! Guess!
If you think I’m the chillest girl in the room, biding my time until I get my next handful of tortilla chips then… ahaha, oh, my God, is that SpongeBob on TV?
It’s a haze of smoke in Drew’s apartment. Half the windows are open, the fan is spinning, and he was probably dumb enough to turn on the AC as well, but we still exist in a foggy cloud of poisons. Drew raided his personal stash as soon as we got home. Me, with my little bag of what I prefer. Ah, yes, this is how you spend an afternoon and evening with the guy who gets paid to humiliate women to the point they drop out of school their senior year of college.
I wasn’t in the market of walking down terrible memory lanes. I came here to hang out. To chill. To get high, apparently.
No, no, no. I don’t smoke as often as you think I do. If anything, I keep my consumption of pot down to the bare minimum. It’s something I indulge when I’m overly anxious, okay? Or when I’m so bored I need a little pick me up. My boyfriends range from teetotalers who rage against any kind of fun (minus their cognac, of course) to tech bros who toke up every night. It’s easy enough for me to swing between the type of woman who never, ever indul
ges, and one who takes a hit of whatever my sugar daddy is offering me that day. (Trust me, tech bros have the worst taste in strains. There’s nothing worse than a bro who spends half his money on shit pot that stinks up the place and makes you more irritable than it’s ever worth.)
Drew, though… his stuff is all right. At least its scent blends well with mine.
Right. We were talking about what I’m like when I’m high? Have you guessed yet?
“Stop!” I lurch forward on the couch, my hand slapping the remote out of Drew’s hand. “SpongeBob!”
He looks between me and the TV. Nickelodeon has reruns on, and I’m not about to pass up my favorite childhood show. As soon as the jingle begins, I’m singing along.
“Man…” Drew slumps back down into his seat, fly half open and hand tenuously down his pants. “Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a pineapple? I don’t like pineapple. I’d rather live in a… hallowed out watermelon. Yeah. Fuck. I want watermelon. You think GrubHub is still going?”
I pull my feet up onto the couch and perch my elbows atop my knees. My joints are so loosey-goosey that I don’t cringe at the pressure this puts on my hips. Although now my mouth is so dry that I need more Fanta. Yes. I’m drinking Orange Fanta, because this trip to Nostalgia Valley isn’t complete without it. “Don’t you have grapes or something in your fridge?” I ask. “I saw them in there earlier.”
“Riiiight. Man, I don’t wanna get up. I wanna sit here and stare at this ugly squid.”
“Dude! Have you seen that creepy pasta about Squidward?”
Drew flinches at the volume of my voice. “No, can’t say I have.”
“His eyes fall out. Or something.”
“Of course they do. Wouldn’t be a creepy pasta without it.”
“I want pasta.”
“Me, too. Did you know Olive Garden delivers?”
I grab my bag of puffy Cheetos and wipe cheese dust on my T-shirt. “I want pasta. And breadsticks. Fuck me up with the carbs, Benton.”
