Wanting to know her.
To make up for lost time.
Creedence, feeling as though Roy Earl the first person to ever ask her what she thought about anything, other than perhaps her Daddy, god rest his soul.
But now Roy Earl appeared pensive. Chewing his lower lip. Tugging at an earlobe like Carol Burnett signing off.
Squeezing a smile at him. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“There’s something I been carrying inside me forever.”
She sat waiting.
“Like I never truly and really said just how totally sorry I was? About not coming to get you like I was supposed to that night.”
“Oh—that? I haven’t given it a second thought in a million freaking years.”
“Remember how I called you? To apologize?”
“A little.”
“I ain’t ever been sure it came through the right way.”
“That’s sweet. But, I accepted your apology back then.”
“I didn’t think you did. That’s why I never tried again. But—there was Dusty, anyway.”
“Don’t remind me.”
His rue, like a fog bank rolling in. Sweat broke out on his lip. “Damn it—I liked you so much, Creedence, but I was so shy. Growing up in some dumb place like Tillman Falls, in that stinking honkytonk, you don’t learn how to talk to girls too good—or I didn’t, at least. Had bad luck with them.”
“Somebody broke your heart.”
He stammered and hemmed and hawed and turned beet red as though busted. “Something like that.”
“I waited in the rain for you.”
Roy Earl, stricken. “You been mad at me all this time.”
She patted his hand. “It wasn’t no big deal.”
“Devin said you cussed me up and down.”
“I only wanted to see the Grateful Dead. And tell everyone back home how fun it all was. How cool I was, you know. For having gotten to go.”
Roy Earl, epiphanic, all but shouting eureka. “You wanna go listen to it?”
“Listen to what?”
“The Dead show I made you miss.”
“What, like, you got a CD of the concert?”
“Tapes, and CDs, yeah. Different versions. There’s even a bootleg VHS—I need to get that transferred to a DVD. Billy, he made us all copies back then. The band, they let their fans record and trade the shows. A cool little sport, in a way, the taping. Blah blah.”
Creedence, never hearing of such a thing. “Dang.”
“So you wanna?”
“That’d be way cool.”
Walking up the hill toward Roy Earl’s house, their hands found each other, sudden and tentative at first, becoming more comfortable. Brisk outside, but not freezing. It barely ever froze in South Carolina. Maybe in the upstate. Never in Charleston. It’s why the snowbirds come south.
The wailing of sirens, coming to them from the other side of the neighborhood closer to campus.
“Here they come.”
“I called them on you, Roy.”
“You did?”
“Yes—for stealing my heart.”
As a spectral caterwauling came from the approaching emergency vehicles passing through the Old Market, she stopped her date under a streetlamp. Backyard dogs, howling. The glow of the streetlights. The city all around them. A first kiss before going inside; before making him hers.
Forgone: Creedence and Roy Earl never made it to the second CD of the three-disc set.
By the time the music twanged into silence, Roy Earl had already exploded inside her once, way too fast, gasping and swooning and gripping her like a life preserver, but the second time, oh yeah, thank goodness, she thought, and which had only taken about twenty minutes to get underway, now that one found Creedence smooching and stroking him back into full erection, clambering aboard, sliding down—slick!—and bumping and grinding atop him until catching herself a good one.
Coming hard.
Screaming, beating him against the chest, whipping her long red hair around and feeling like a woman, a real woman, hahahaha, alive and whole and awake.
Roy Earl, hollering and laughing, exploded for a second time.
Both of them, drenched. Nothing needed saying aloud.
Later, she woke up to him stroking and kissing her, half-asleep and murmuring and thankful; a trance of love.
“I must be dreaming,” he whispered. “Please don’t let me wake up. Please.”
Creedence, snuggling over next to him, feeling adored. Well—wasn’t that easy? He had been right there all along, waiting. Nobody knew.
Eighty-Five
Devin
Devin sat alone in the empty apartment a few blocks off Blossom, in a 1940’s-era house of four flats next to a huge orphanage on Millwood, with a tall oak tree and an open soccer field by the windows giving a sense of nature and green. Convenient, a five-minute drive to campus, or if by foot, an easy, level stroll mostly downhill in dappled Carolina light, with the chirping of the birds way up in hundred year-old trees back from when they first laid out this neighborhood, the first suburb of the city proper nearer the river. The American dream here; aging, but on display. Rah rah. Good class of people here. Creedence, if Devin weren’t around that much after all, would be fine.
She could get another roomie, if need be.
Floating through the empty rooms, stashing the boxes here and there. Transoms over the doors, that’s how old this creaky old place was. Its details bespoke its age like the lines around his Mama’s mouth, the flesh that hung from her throat, the eyes that pierced him red and frustrated all the time, like an alkie forever waiting for the damn bars to open.
Devin, thinking, how many lived and loved here in this old house before?
A creaking sound came to him. The neighbors upstairs. Muffled voices. Spirits in the material world.
The hardwoods, refinished to a thick shine; footfalls echoing on the kitchen vinyl, peeling up underneath the lower cabinets; plaster-patched walls, a wrought iron fire escape leading from the back door down to a tiny, leaf-strewn backyard. Another resident’s junker Fiat sat tucked into a leaf-strewn corner of the fence on blocks, its white finish covered in mildew, twigs, rotting flora. Old, ancient plaster, cracked, peeling paint around windowsills, burns and stains on the floor. This apartment a place where many had lived, in its modern era now serving college students. Beerdrunk students, hard on the furniture. Hard on the foundations of these old places. Hard on themselves.
But Devin, taking it easy.
One day at a time.
Devin, going outside, breathed in the cold air. Heavy traffic on the drive over, a long holiday weekend coming up, thousands making the pilgrimage down to the bowl game in Florida. Squatting on the dark stoop and smoking, eyes drawn by the red and green Christmas lights glowing in the windows of a house across the way, he heard dogs howling, and faraway sirens.
Feeling in his jacket. For the pint stashed therein. For a bracer, a toot.
“Good times.” To nobody.
The bottle, not there.
Glad.
Feeling around in another pocket, pulling out a phone instead.
A female voice, answering on the first ring, though doing so nonverbally: Both silent, the age of caller ID allowing Millie Haversford foreknowledge of who’d deigned—at last—to call her back.
“Well, well.”
“It is I, babygirl.”
“A holiday miracle,” a touch sarcastic. “How are you, Ruck?”
“Right as rain, honey. As right as a boy can be.”
“This is wonderful. I’ve been waiting to hear that.”
“Wellsir! There ya go.”
A moment of grace.
Maybe. Millie would take some selling on his state of mind. “Are you really?”
Devin, yeah, into it, he said. Into the meetings. On the program. “I slipped for a week or two, but got right again.”
“It’s a slippery slope,” sounding disappointed, cautious.
> That he had gotten rid of his demons only after getting sober via the coma felt, at times, way too easy.
“You gotta be careful about getting arrogant. Thinking you’ve got it beat.”
“How long you got now, girl?”
She told him—five years. “Long enough to stick. Or so I’m planning.”
Devin, waiting to have more delusions like before, but nothing too out of the ordinary had come. Other than thinking Millie would want to hear from him. In general type-deal.
He could tell she didn’t. All business from her end. Wary. Concealed.
She went on. “Recovery, it’s a long road. And from what you’ve told me? You’ve got a good bit of work, yet.”
“A work in progress.”
“Healing takes a long time. And you—we—were sick.”
“Still am. But I ain’t, what-cha call it, complacent.”
“Better not be.”
“It wa’n’t nothing but a put-on, girl. You got to know that. Not the alcoholism. But damn near everything else.”
“Telling me something I don’t know?”
Devin, wondering if she didn’t think him some sort of weirdo. Again hearing sirens far off in the distance.
“Didn’t know what to think.”
“None of it had to do with you. Get it?”
His old gal-pal, asking, then, with whom?
“All me, little lady-friend. All for me. And the ghosts following me.”
Dry. “How gratifying.”
Hanging there in the foyer of the building like his cigarette smoke, her words cut to the bone. But she had a right.
“I think I’m done pretending, though.”
“Baby steps. Know the ones I mean?”
He thought he did. Said so.
She told him to keep her posted; that she had to go.
“You’re with somebody, aren’t ya?”
She didn’t seem to want to answer.
“I missed my chance—didn’t I?”
“Let’s talk another time. Bye, now.”
Sounded good enough for now. “Okay.”
But after hanging up, it sunk in: that was that with Millie. He guessed he would stop thinking about her. But, like Creedence and Roy on their date, who knew what was to come next in this crazy life of his?
Eighty-Six
Billy
Reaching down and pumping his bloody steeplemeat, Billy tried to maintain his tenuous erection; the moment upon him, but he hadn’t time to pop a Viagra. Considering how much liquor he’d chugged while Libby had gone to the bathroom, a miracle he’d stayed hard as he had.
How she had shrieked with disgust. She came back into the room to find him nude. Erect. And huge, even at half-mast.
Also because he lunged for her.
How she’d recoiled from his fiery breath. Slipped from his damp grasp, hands greasy from lubing his meat.
He chased her around in the Media Hub, The Big Lebowski Five-Year Anniversary Edition Deluxe DVD Set playing loud from the speakers and the woofer. Marleigh. Billy. Multiple attempts and multiple ways and and means and feints and much shrieking and breaking of lamps and bongs and whatnot. SHATTER went not only the dope glassware, stinking up the joint with awful resinous weed-funk, but also a cacophonous crash from the heavy, bevelled, burdened tabletop full of liquor bottles and lubricant and his old Star Wars toys, pulled out of an archival storage bin where he kept the best of his old childhood mementos, the movie mementos and superhero dolls and one of those old twelve-inch, original GI Joe action figures.
But otherwise Billy, in control; no accidents happening this time. That was the old Billy. This would be straight sex, penetrative and fulfilling.
Cornering her, at last. “What do you say, Libby? Never too late?”
On the plasma screen, in eight billion colors and 9.1 surround sound, The Dude smoked the roach into his throat, spilled his beer, wrecked his beleaguered car. Billy, playing with himself and trying to stay halfway hard, loomed over her.
Marleigh, gasping and crying in disbelief, cringed into the corner. She grabbed a fistful of Criterion editions off the shelf nearest her. Threatened him with the arthouse classics. “You sick fuck. I’ll kill you if you touch me.”
“Oh, bother. Take a breather from all your blather. Now get those grungy cords off so I can give you what came for.”
She whimpered, heaving a copy of Bergman’s Persona at his face, which he batted away. The disc still had its shrink-wrap and price tag from B&N. She followed it with a weak heave of Antonioni’s The Passenger, which fell short.
Billy, dumbstruck by Marleigh’s lack of enthusiasm, became vociferous and detailed in his criticism—he excoriated her every fashion, hair and cosmetics choice, her explication of his paper, her desire to write scripts.
“No wonder I can’t get going. Not sexy. And put down my mother-freaking movies, if you please. We have all the time in the world, now, to watch them all.”
Marleigh begged. “Please—I don’t do it with guys.”
Billy let that sink in. “Not yet you don’t,” he finally said. “And besides, you owe me for that bong.”
A challenge. Still, lesbian snatch better than Melanie. Where was the fun? Where was the thrill of the hunt? This, what he’d been waiting for. A game. A contest of wills.
His brief reverie, broken; Marleigh, a ghost, seemed to have swooped and slid between his legs like a base hit batter going for home. She bolted down the hallway.
“Say, now—where in the freaking heck do ya think you’re going? We haven’t fucked yet.” Billy, his dick finally stretching and hardening, gave chase.
A huge crash. In the hallway he saw that Marleigh had tripped and fallen halfway into the living room.
Billy, skipping down the hall in a silly prancing gait, meatwhistle bobbing up and down, shouted, “Damn your execrable recalcitrance. I’m finally ripping a good one, here.”
But Marleigh, sly; as he reached down for her, she rolled and put the hard heel of her hand up into Billy’s strong jaw-line.
Billy, stunned, but barely. He yanked her up by her sweater, which ripped around the neckline.
Striking her backhanded across the face.
Hard.
Marleigh, limp, collapsed to the floor. Whimpering. Groggy.
Shocked with himself—he’d never hit a woman in his life. He loved them. This required reflection and introspection. “Wow. That happened.”
As he vaguely watched Marleigh roll over and crawl away toward the kitchen, Billy, resigned to having done the action, yanked at his meat and said, “Crude, I know. But, if that’s what it’s going to take, I get it. Fine.”
Libby, one for the ages, this battle. The naughtiest tail ever.
The naughtiest tale ever.
Ha-ha.
Panicking.
Why the hell all the drinking? Why couldn’t he get high anymore? Panic, redoubling. Heart going like the triple crown winner.
Marleigh.
On her feet.
Disappearing into the kitchen.
“Libby? This is ridiculous. Let’s do it in the bedroom. My bed, this time. Let’s do this right… at last.”
Marleigh, looking nothing like Libby Meade, met him in the kitchen doorway.
A war cry.
Lunging at him.
With a knife from the butcher block in her hand.
The cleaver.
Big enough to slice right through a piece of tough steak.
Like a razor—he rarely used it. Probably sharp as the day Billy bought the set.
Sharp as a whisper.
Slashing with it.
No chance for a big speech; a moment, not frozen and hanging there, but fast. A wet tugging, an arc of her arm motion stuttering and completing in a viscous torrent of what Billy thought at first was his own orgasm, Libby finishing him off with a hand-job about which they’d one day write epic poems and song-cycles.
Nope.
Seemed to be not-good, in fact.
Throwing the knife down, caroming off the doorframe and out the door, Marleigh became like a frightened deer, Billy thinking; a little scared whitetail doe like you’d see on one of Ruck’s back roads over in Edgewater County, the ones on which he told Billy him and Dobbs and Roy Earl used to drive around, drunker than shit, because at their age—sixteen or seventeen—you couldn’t go drinking at places like that honkytonk The Dixiana, not with Roy’s grandpa running the joint. But you had to watch out for the wildlife, he advised.
Ruck.
Libby.
All this blood.
“Guys—this is bad.” But his voice seemed to be gone. His breath, too.
Ruck had caught him and Libby. Had gone and cut his goddamn dick off.
How many dreams like this had he had? At least he’d wake up from this one, too.
But shit. What a dream, this. Covered in blood.
His balls, sitting there.
On the floor.
The heavy door, shutting behind her with a thud; Marleigh, the hell and gone. Must have gotten a second wind.
Billy, heartbroken. Epic fail. But why?
Pounding liquor. Resuming the movie, trying not to think about the next day. Hurting, but it’d pass. Bleeding everywhere.
The couch, wet.
Fuck.
Thinking about his new life. Matters working themselves out. He’d eat DC alive. He’d make contacts, some of them in show business.
Billy, on his way for real.
Fuck Marleigh, fuck the lies he’d told. He’d make his own reality, as his dad had always bidden him.
Searching for the phone, slipping around in his own creamy dream-blood, thinking about calling 9/11. Or 9-1-1, he meant. They got mixed up in the mind, now, that day of terror and the traditional emergency phone number. One of those crazy coincidences.
Billy, telling the nice person on the phone how he thought he might be bleeding to death. Saying, “Send ’em on over, pardner. Probably dying, yo.” Sounding like good old drunk Devin. “Cut myself. Somehow.”
Billy, staggering out on the balcony with his canister of nitrous oxide and the last of the brown liquor; Billy, bleeding and dickless, pondered how he was to keep on writing scripts if he had to work on all this campaign bullshit with his dad.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 54
