Robin and Ruby

by K. M. Soehnlein

  The nail-biter says, “Your sister sure knows how to stir up trouble.”

  “Don’t say one fucking word about her,” Robin answers. “Not a word.”

  In the living room, he finds George sitting on the couch alongside Calvin, who is applying pressure to his nose with a bloodstained dishrag. “I don’t think you broke it,” George is saying. “Keep the pressure on.”

  “It hurts,” Calvin says.

  “I want to take my sister home,” Robin says, stepping closer to George.

  “To Manhattan?”

  “No, I think to Greenlawn. For starters, anyway.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be back at work tomorrow?”

  “I can’t think about that right now,” Robin says, though what he’s thinking, and what George likely realizes, too, is that if Robin doesn’t show up, he’ll be fired. Probation violated, end of story. A chain reaction of consequences tumbles forth from there: no rent money, no way to stay in Philly without a job, no more living with George.

  He says, “I can’t let any of these boys drive Ruby home. No way.”

  “It’s cool, I get it,” George says.

  “So you’ll take us?”

  George nods. “I’m with you.” There’s sweat on his brow, the sheen of whatever effort he just expended.

  Robin puts his hand on George’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about all of this. I’m sorry I keep having to find reasons to say I’m sorry.” He feels himself just barely holding back everything tender he wants to express. This is no time for emotion, here in this room, amid this chaos.

  From behind them, Calvin’s voice: “I think it stopped.”

  Robin pivots to see him standing, his nose crusted in blood, a smear of crimson on his cheek. And then he sees that Calvin is staring across the room. At Ruby.

  She stands in the hallway, pale and quiet, a ghostly version of herself. Her eyes dart about nervously.

  Calvin stares at her. “We gotta talk, Ruby.”

  “My bag is still in your car,” she says.

  “Come with me. I’ll drive you back to the city.”

  “I can’t go with you.”

  “Why not?”

  Robin steps between them. “Ruby, I don’t want you leaving my sight. George is driving us back to Greenlawn.”

  Calvin throws his arms wide, raises his voice melodramatically. “So that’s it? ‘Get my bag, Calvin.’ And then I just sit here bleeding? Ruby, where the fuck have you been? With that guy? That maniac? What the fuck?”

  Robin says, “Calvin, don’t push it.” But he sees that Ruby hasn’t flinched, even in the face of this outburst.

  “I apologize,” she says.

  “Great. That’s fucking great. I’m sorry, too, Ruby, I’m sorry I ever got involved with a bitch like you.” He spins around, almost a full rotation, as Robin had seen him do back at the bar, his frustration like an involuntary spasm. “You, too. Fuck off, Robin.”

  Robin calls after him, but Calvin is already out the door and down the steps, his long legs taking him quickly away. Ruby follows Calvin with her eyes, and Robin sees how unnervingly calm she is, how seemingly without remorse at the end of this relationship. She lets her gaze travel once again across the wreckage of the party, like she’s committing the place to memory. The finality of this is almost chilling.

  He tells her to stay put, tells George to remain here with her, and then he heads out the door after Calvin, promising to return with Ruby’s bag.

  On the sidewalk he has to jog to catch up, and by the time he gets to Calvin, he’s winded.

  “Slow down.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Come on.” Robin pulls out his cigarettes, waves them at Calvin. This does the trick; at last he stops. “Look, you did a good thing,” Robin says, lighting one for each of them, remembering his lessons: become like the person you need to impress. “I know this is messed up, I know you’re pissed—”

  “She’s rejecting me. That’s what’s going on. For that slime bag. You have no idea what that feels like.”

  Robin exhales and says, “Actually, I just got dumped yesterday.”

  “Really?” Calvin looks him in the eye. “That guy, the one I met at your play?”

  “Yeah, that one. And for all I know he’s off with someone else already.”

  “That’s so unfair,” Calvin moans.

  It is unfair, Robin thinks. But there sometimes seems to be a finite amount of fairness in the world, as if no one can gain unless someone else loses, all of them kept in cruel balance with each other.

  “For all I know, Peter did me a favor. Maybe Ruby’s doing you a favor.”

  Calvin waves dismissively and resumes walking down the street, at last locating his car, a newish Saab parked too close to the corner. A parking ticket is stuck under the wipers. “Fucking great,” Calvin mumbles, throwing the ticket into the front seat, where it lands on another one. “I’ll just send that to your sister.”

  He pops the trunk and pulls out a bag. Robin recognizes it as one he gave to Ruby for her birthday, black leather bands around gray canvas, still in good shape. He remembers writing in the card: “For your next adventure.” He’d imagined her traveling overseas, or maybe out west, to California, anywhere beyond New York and New Jersey, where she’s spent her entire life.

  Calvin is staring at the bag as if he wants to plant a bomb in it and send it back to Ruby with a ticking timer inside.

  “Calvin, I’m sure there’s someone else for you, a better fit. I’m sure.”

  “Right. Like anyone would go out with me.” He slumps against the car, puffing at the cigarette.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “People hate me.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s not a big fucking secret. I can handle it, you know? I’m an outsider.”

  “I don’t hate you. You can be a big baby, like you’re being now—” Calvin frowns, and Robin adds quickly, “—but you’re a good person. You did a good thing, calling me, searching for Ruby. Just because she’s not grateful doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

  “What kills me is she spent the night with that guy. She probably gave it up for him.”

  Robin exhales. “Calvin, you’ll have some good sex in your life, don’t worry.” He rests his hand on Calvin’s arm, wanting to calm him down, and wanting to get back to the house.

  Calvin stares at Robin’s hand, long enough that Robin has to wonder what exactly he’s thinking. Then Calvin says quickly, “You know I’m bisexual?”

  Robin coughs. He almost loosens his grip, then decides to hold steady. “You are? I mean, sure, I kind of figured—”

  “I was going to tell Ruby. But I was afraid she’d break up with me. Ha!”

  “Have you…done anything?”

  “I messed around with one guy. He was there, just now.”

  “It wasn’t Chris, was it?” He drops his arm.

  “No. Benjamin.”

  The nail-biter. Of course.

  “It didn’t mean anything. But, yeah, we messed around a little last summer. I made the move. Before I met Ruby.”

  “Maybe you’ll get to explore this side—”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Calvin says, suddenly brusque. “Everyone’s bisexual. I’ve been reading a lot of theory. Marcuse calls it polymorphous perversity. Everyone in an ideal world would be able to express it. Bisexuality is inherently a critique, because it refuses the dualistic labeling of sexuality.”

  “Right. Kinsey said we’re all on a scale somewhere.”

  “I’m not saying I’m smack in the middle. I mean, I still like a nice set of tits.”

  “Of course.”

  Robin looks up the block. He’s ready to go now, worried that he’s been away from Ruby again for too long. George is with her, though. George will take care of things.

  Calvin says, “You figured it out? That’s what you said, just now.”

  “The script,” Robin says. “Look,
I really need to get back to—”

  Calvin snaps his fingers. “The best thing that could come out of this is that my script gets a jolt of new energy. I’m thinking I should have Agnetha take off with some other guy, while Carter goes looking for her. Do you think that would work? I mean, based on what you read?”

  “It could…”

  “Because you get the undertone that runs through it, that Carter’s really lusting after his friend, right?”

  “Oh, yes, that was apparent.” Seems even more apparent now, knowing that Bennett in the script comes from Benjamin in life. But, really, Benjamin, that wiseass? The one who was so quick to label Robin gay as soon as he met him, who insulted George with that Mr. T. crack? Calvin seems to lack the capacity for good judgment. “Why don’t you let Carter become more aware at the end?”

  “You mean in the bathroom? It’s supposed to be ambiguous.”

  “But it’s kind of a cliché. The whole thing with the razor.”

  “It is? Because I’m, like, morally opposed to cliché.”

  “So don’t make the sexually confused guy come off as weak. It’s not the 1950s, you know.” And then he says something he hadn’t planned to say, though as soon as he does it seems true. “I’d like to play a character who’s more ready to deal with being gay. Or bi. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “See, this is why I knew you needed to take that role, because you’re in tune with the themes and motifs I’m interweaving into this, and the social context of imagery and so forth.” Calvin opens the Saab’s back door and pulls a notebook off the floor. “I’m going to stay here and write some of these new ideas down.”

  “Good. I’ll take the bag and get Ruby. Do you want me to give her a message?”

  “No, fuck her. Sorry. I mean—tell her if she wants to maintain any sort of friendship she’s going to have to make it up to me. I’m serious. I’m not gonna go sniffing after her like some kind of pussywhipped guy.”

  “Will do.”

  Robin gives Calvin another squeeze on the arm. Calvin looks up at him and beams. It’s surprising, this genuine affection. But it passes soon enough, and he returns his attention to his notebook, his hand looping across the lined pages in a fit of inspiration.

  Robin turns and moves back down the street, his sister’s case in his grip. The bag is remarkably heavy, as if she had packed for a longer journey.

  From the front porch, she calls out to the Deadheads in the lawn chairs, “Did you see a guy come out here—black hair, red T-shirt?” They send her vacant stares and shrugs. She looks up and down the street. Only a few trees. Little shade or shelter. Nowhere to hide, but no sign of Chris.

  She can’t be sure he hasn’t left for good. He knows she lied to him. Then Cicely wouldn’t let him in the bathroom. Then Calvin picked a fight and might have hurt him. He could have decided enough was enough. And if she’s right—that he got high with Benjamin—he could have followed that buzzing energy anywhere. She takes a few steps into the front yard, a plot of arid ground between the stoop and the sidewalk, more gravel than grass. There’s a wobble to her step, some leftover dizziness. She wonders if that was alcohol poisoning. A hot merciless wind sends a wad of Kleenex sputtering along the sidewalk. The toe of her boot snags on something in the dirt. She reaches down and with one finger pries up what seems to be the lower half of a bikini, a riot of color, coated in filth. At that moment she senses eyes upon her. A woman her mother’s age is sweeping the sidewalk a few houses down, scrutinizing her.

  “Day and night, nothing but a racket,” the woman snarls. “You should be ashamed.”

  “No, I’m not part of this—” Ruby begins and then stops, because the woman’s accusatory expression doesn’t change, and really, why would it? To her, Ruby is just one more troublemaker here for the weekend, blazing a path of destruction in the name of partying. And anyway, Ruby is part of this. She’s smack in the middle of it.

  The soiled bikini bottom dangles from her finger. In a flash she remembers a preposterous thought that soared across her mind as she leaned over the porcelain bowl and emptied herself out—the idea that throwing up would somehow protect her from pregnancy. That the violence of the act would—what? Loosen any fertilized egg that wanted to attach itself inside of her? She feels a repulsive shudder travel down her back. She flicks the bikini to the ground again. The woman with the broom, still watching, lets out a disapproving grunt. Ruby drags the cloth with her boot toward the porch steps, as if this might make a difference. What if she is pregnant and she never sees him again? What if he kills himself—would she have to keep the baby, to keep him alive?

  “Hey, Ruby—over here.”

  She recognizes his voice before she sees him—already she knows what her name sounds like coming from his mouth—and then there he is, just a little ways down, sitting on the hood of a car, exactly as he’d done outside the club. Sitting and waiting. Thank you, God. She has the strong impulse to run to him, grab his hand, and drag him away. To disappear together once more and not tell anyone. Wasn’t everything fine until they came back here? The room at the Island Beach Motor Lodge is paid for. She can go home tomorrow, after another night with Chris. She can visit Jackson’s grave tomorrow, too. A day late, yes, but she can memorialize his birthweek. She walks slowly to him, her steps controlled.

  Chris’s face is puffy on one side. There’s a bright red patch where his jaw meets his neck—is that from Calvin? It nearly mirrors the scratch Dorian gave her last night. It repulses her, all this fighting. They’re supposed to be adults, but they’re as primitive as wild animals.

  “You and me,” he says. “That’s all I care about.” He slides off the hood and reaches for her hand. He wants to take her away. Already she can read his intention in a single gesture. The desire apparent in his body language. There’s something so powerful in that knowledge. But she stops short. Because it’s not last night anymore, and now there are too many questions.

  “Did you?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Did you do coke with Benjamin? Just before, in the house?”

  “Benjamin’s always got coke. Fucking Scarface.”

  She press her lips together, waiting.

  He hunches his shoulders guiltily. “I did one little half-line. I was just trying to slow him down.”

  “Slow him down?”

  He drops his head, looks at his hands. “I was confused. He was talking all kinds of shit. About you. That you weren’t really—”

  “What? A virgin?”

  He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

  “That’s what he said, right?”

  “Is it true?”

  Now she finds herself looking away, trying to come up with the words. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  A grunt, the sound of pain being absorbed, releases from his throat. “Just tell me it wasn’t Calvin.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Because for all you know he has AIDS.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he’s got homo tendencies! Everyone knows that.”

  He’s clearly still wired, his mind unsettled, his thoughts spinning like a boardwalk wheel of fortune, round and round he goes and where he’ll land nobody knows. In the periphery of her vision Ruby sees the woman with the broom standing still, taking all of this in. Ruby steps closer to him and deliberately lowers her voice. “You were the one who didn’t want to keep the condom on. So don’t talk to me about AIDS.”

  “At least I’m not a liar. You let me think you were—that you hadn’t—”

  “Why does it matter to you?”

  “You said I was the first.” He really does sound upset—she understands why. She let him believe it.

  But her anger is strong, too. “You’re just mad that you didn’t get to screw a virgin. You’d say anything to get in my pants, wouldn’t you? You probably didn’t even plan to kill yourself.”

  “How can you say these things to me?”

  �
�Because I don’t know you!”

  There’s a clang from across the street, the metal lid of a garbage can banging into place. The woman there yells, “I’ll call the cops on you!”

  “Fuck you,” Ruby screams. “You’re not my mother!”

  The woman drags the back of her hand up her throat, flicking out a fuck-you, and then she scurries off into her house. Maybe she will call the cops. Maybe they’ll be here any minute.

  Chris is staring at her through his droopy bangs, and what she can see in his eyes is pure pain. She thinks she should take back the words she just shouted at him, but she can’t. It doesn’t work that way.

  At last, he says, “OK, maybe I did a little tiny line, like that long and that wide.” He holds two fingers together, a sliver of air between them. “But I’m not like Benjamin, I’m not a fucking cokehead. I’ll stop. I’ll never do it again if you don’t want me to. I didn’t know it would bother you.” He drops his head in his hands, whimpering, “I’ll totally stop, if you’ll be my girlfriend. If you wanted me to never do coke, or any other drug, ever again, and that meant we could spend all our time together—that I could be your boyfriend, for real—I would stop.”

  “I don’t need a boyfriend, I need a lover.” For a split second she isn’t sure if she’s said these words aloud or simply thought them. But then he shakes his head and without warning begins to walk away. She doesn’t want to chase after him but she can’t let him leave like this. “Chris—wait! I just meant—”

  Over his shoulder, he says, “No, I get it now. You’re not a sign. You’re a temptation I was supposed to resist.”

  She rushes to him, grabs him by the arm, halts his retreat.

  “You can pretend this never happened,” he says, voice drained of emotion. “Pretend you’re a virgin and find another stupid guy to fall in love with you.”

  His face is a mask, is stone, but even in his impassivity she sees the face she fell in love with last night—she did fall in love, didn’t she? What else could she call it? Would they be tearing each other apart if it was anything else?

  “Listen, Robin wants me to go with him.”