Recycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

I stumble into a stall to pee.

  “All right,” she says. “Get it out of your system.”

  “I am.”

  “Not that,” she says. “I mean reasons for you not to sleep with that guy.”

  “Ramie!” I say. “I’m not going to get drunk and sleep with the first guy who comes along.”

  She peers over the top of the door. “He is non-ugly,” she says. “And he’s not the first one to come along. Remember that guy in the park?”

  “He smelled like onions.”

  “All guys smell like onions sometimes. Stop making excuses.”

  “Do you mind?”

  She sighs and pulls herself away.

  What I don’t tell Ramie is that it feels wrong to flirt with Ian. It feels like cheating. But I know this is the result of temporary brain damage from my Tommy Knutson love hangover, so I choose to repress it. Don’t knock repression. It’s a powerful tool.

  When I join Ramie at the mirror, I cannot believe how awful Natalie’s bright red lipstick looks.

  “Rames! Why didn’t you tell me?” I grab a paper towel and start wiping it off. “I look like the mouth that ate Brooklyn.”

  “I thought that’s what you were going for.” She hands me a small tub of Vaseline from her purse, followed by a tube of pink lip gloss. “Strawberry,” she says. “So your kisses will taste good.”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going to kiss him yet.” I put her lip gloss on, then look in the mirror. “I do like him. But don’t you think there’s something, I don’t know, kind of scary about him?”

  “What?” she says. “Like the fact that he’s twenty-four?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve never dated in the twenties. That’s like skipping grades.”

  “I know!” She nods excitedly. “Hey, Sasha’s kind of cute, right?”

  “Ramie.”

  “What? I can notice a guy is cute. Jill, please tell me you’re not spying on me for Jack.”

  “Dude,” I say. “Jack spies on me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t planning on doing anything,” she says. “I’m just being a good wingman.”

  “Dutifully remembered,” I say.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to narc me out to Jack!”

  “Ramie,” I say. “Do you not understand the mechanics of our situation?”

  “Right,” she says. “But just so we’re clear, I am strictly on wingman duty.”

  “And I am deeply going to remember that sentence so Jack won’t suspect you of cheating. Can we bring it back to me now?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s say I do want to kiss Ian. How do I make that happen without looking slutty? Vampy is fine.”

  “Vampy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm.” Ramie leans against the sink with me and has a think.

  We say nothing for a while, as our brains churn. Oddly, I find myself wondering what Jack would do in this situation. Then I realize Jack would have stolen Ian’s wallet by now to get his address. Then he’d stake out his bedroom window from a tree.

  “You know what?” I say. “Screw it. I’m just going to kiss him.” I head to the door.

  “Good plan.” She grabs her purse and follows me.

  Once outside the bathroom, I notice that Natalie has gone, but two more guys have joined Ian and Sasha. I pull Ramie back. “You think those are the guys Natalie warned me about? You know, the total players?”

  “Unknown,” she says. “The black guy’s cute, though. Is that racist?”

  “Possibly,” I say. “Can girls be players?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  I head toward them, but Ramie pulls me back and shoves her face in my neck.

  “Can you believe we’re actually hanging out in a bar in New York?” she says. “With guys in their twenties?”

  “I know!” I say. “Okay, stop being giddy.”

  “Right. Right.”

  Ramie puts on a blank expression, then joins me as we head back to our table, cool as cukes. By the time we get there, the two other guys have made themselves scarce.

  “This place is starting to suck,” Ian says.

  I glance around. Dexter’s has filled up with people I would not describe as sucking. In fact, I would describe them as the height of cool.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe we should go.”

  Ramie gives me the stink eye.

  “I mean maybe we should all go together,” I say. “We could … get some beer and … go up to our roof?”

  Ian and Sasha shoot each other glances, but what those glances communicate I can’t decipher.

  Fifteen minutes later I’m standing at the ledge of my roof looking down at one of our neighbors who’s peeing against a tree while his dog does the same thing.

  “That doesn’t seem very neighborly,” I say.

  When I look up, I notice that Ramie and Sasha have wandered to the other side of the roof, leaving only Ian, who removes a beer from the six-pack.

  I do not need a beer. I’m still buzzed from the early one, plus all the sips Natalie snuck me. I take the beer from Ian and vow to pretend drink it. That was my best trick at parties in high school—not that I went to many.

  “So,” I say. “Who were those two guys at the bar?”

  “Just friends,” he says. “Natalie knows them.”

  “How?”

  “She dated them.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Both of them?”

  He nods. “Yeah. At the same time, actually.”

  “At the same time?” I say.

  He nods.

  “Oh,” I say. “That’s …” I almost say interesting, but that is something my mother would say, and I am not going to start quoting Helen McTeague. Instead, I leave the sentence unfinished.

  Ian keeps his eyes glued to mine as he drinks his beer. “It didn’t last long,” he says.

  I nod. I don’t want to give him the impression that I’m scandalized. Perhaps dating two guys at once is a normal, everyday occurrence here. It’s funny because before I met Natalie, I would have placed such behavior squarely in the slut column. I guess it belongs in the vamp column, however, because Natalie did it. Live and learn.

  “You’re not drinking your beer,” Ian says.

  I take a pretend sip.

  After looking at me for a deliciously agonizing four Mississippis, he brushes my arm with the tips of his fingers. “You’re really pretty,” he says.

  I laugh nervously. Ian just keeps looking at me like he means business. I’m able to hold his gaze for a few seconds, but eventually my attention is drawn to the other side of the roof, where Ramie is fake laughing at something Sasha has said. In fact, she’s openly flirting. Why would she do that? Surely her wingman duties were satisfied once we arrived on the roof. Shouldn’t she be fake yawning by now? She shouldn’t be chatting Sasha up and infusing him with false hopes.

  They are false hopes, right?

  Soft lips touch my cheek. I’m so startled, I almost fall over.

  Ian catches me by the elbow. “Are you all right?” he says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m a little drunk.”

  He brings his face close to mine. “I won’t tell your parents,” he whispers.

  “Good,” I whisper back. “They’re three states away.”

  I put my bottle on the ledge of the roof. Ian puts his down too, then steps closer. We have already sped from the smiling-at-each-other phase to the looking-at-each-other-seriously phase, and now I sense the rapidly approaching kissing phase. It’s all moving so quickly. Just this morning I was unable to smile at strangers.

  Ian takes my hand and leans forward slowly. But just before our lips connect, a high-pitched sound rips through the air from the cell phone in my pocket.

  It’s a text alert.

  Only two people text me, and one of them is brazenly flirting on the other side of the roof.

  “Do you have to get that?” Ian asks.

  I shake my head. O
f course I don’t have to get it. It’ll just be Tommy Knutson with another torturously vague text-haiku. Why would I answer that?

  Politeness alone dictates that I pay more attention to the tall, sleek stranger bearing down on me than to the vague, coded signals casually lobbed by Mr. Play It by Ear. Mr. Play It by Ear is not on my rooftop. He’s somewhere west of here, quite possibly (you can’t rule it out) screwing his way to San Francisco. For all I know, that’s what Play It by Ear means. At any rate, I’m sure it’s not in the Play It by Ear Guidebook to spoil the moment with your current crush to retrieve a text from a guy who is not even for definitely sure being faithful to you; who is, when you stop to think about it, breaking your heart in slow motion.

  Or am I breaking his?

  Ian touches the ends of my wig very gently. Quickly, in the amount of time it takes to screw up my courage, I convince myself that Play It by Ear means whatever I decide it means. Then I do what any uber-sophisticated New York City vamp would do. I stand on my tippy-toes and kiss Ian on the lips. He wraps his arms around me, and before I know it, he’s pushed me up against the four-foot ledge of the roof. Our mouths are locked, but my eyes are open. I can see Ramie and Sasha on the other side watching us. Ramie takes Sasha’s hand and leads him out of view. I want to know where she’s going, but I have other things fighting for my attention.

  “Can I stay here tonight?” Ian asks.

  I pull back. “What?”

  Instead of answering, he kisses me again.

  Surely I can’t let Ian spend the night so soon in our relationship. Such an act would fall squarely in the slut column, wouldn’t it?

  On the other hand, I love the way his body feels pressed up against mine.

  When my cell phone beeps again, Ian slides his hand into my thigh pocket and grabs it. “You sure you don’t want to get that?”

  I shake my head.

  He turns it off. Then he smiles at me as he puts it back in my pocket. It’s a mischievous smile, full of lusty intent.

  I do like that about him. It’s strange. It’s novel. It’s a completely novel sensation.

  And isn’t this precisely the kind of new experience that will change me from a girl to a woman? The kind of woman who stands on her rooftop kissing total strangers who are unvetted by the Winterhead public school system? Twelve months of this, and I will be unrecognizable indeed.

  But in a good way, I promise.

  The ceramic poodle is grinning at me in double vision and my mouth tastes like something died in it. When I sit up in bed, the room spins. I throw the covers off and lean over the side of the bed with my head in my hands. That’s when I realize I’m naked. Jill never sleeps naked. Sure, she ditched the lace thongs a while ago—after much complaining from moi, re: battered testicles—but these days she usually wears these goofy Tinker Bell pajamas. They’re too small for me, but they’re made of this soft, stretchy fabric that actually feels nice.

  Something’s wrong today. Correction: everything’s wrong. Normally when I wake up, my brain is flooded with sharp, crispy Jillmemories, usually of boring things. This morning I have nothing but cotton between my ears. What did she do last night?

  The cell phone beeps from across the room and I stalk over to retrieve it, tripping over Jill’s last outfit, which lies in a heap on the floor. There’s a message from the ever-mysterious TK. I’m about to retrieve it when I realize that this strange sensation of dizziness and mind cotton is a hangover.

  Jill got drunk yesterday!

  I take a deep breath and try to dig out more details from Jill-time, but everything’s murky. I can picture Dexter’s, Ramie, some pretty girl with black hair, a dude named Ian.

  Wait a minute. I know that dude. His name’s not Ian. It’s—

  Holy crap! Jill made out with Larson last night. Yes, Larson. Ian Larson. That scrawny linguist who trades girls. He kissed us. With tongues!

  I storm into the bathroom and brush my teeth so hard it might strip the enamel. Good. I don’t want tooth enamel that’s been tainted by Ian Larson. What could Jill have been thinking? Could she not infer his obvious “malness”? Did he not exude an aroma of pure evil? A scent of sulfur and Altoids?

  I throw on a towel and barge into Ramie’s empty room. To cleanse the residue of Larson, I dive onto Ramie’s unmade bed and rub her pillow all over me. It smells just like her, musty and coconutty. Her black panties hang from a knob on a dresser drawer, and I’m sorry to report that I do not resist the temptation to press them to my face. I don’t even hesitate. I lie smothered in Ramie’s luscious, purifying aroma, my body responding in exactly the way you’d expect. But when I reach for the old Viking to erase the atrocity of last night with a quick, cleansing wank, more Jillmemories surface.

  Strawberry-flavored lip gloss.

  The rooftop.

  Larson and Jill pawing at each other on one side while, on the other side, Ramie giddily fake laughs with some chubby guy named Sasha.

  But Sasha was the fourth name on that chart, which means …

  Ramie and Jill were double-teamed by girl-traders!

  The Viking deflates.

  Squeezing my eyes closed, I stay focused on the ever-sharpening memories of last night as Jill’s feelings course through me like bad clams. There’s guilt for “cheating” on Knutson, plus lust, actual lust, for Larson.

  But here’s the worst part: despite getting all sexed up over Larson’s exploration of her gums with his tongue, Jill’s attention kept wandering to the other side of the roof, where Ramie was flirting with Sasha. I can see the whole thing clearly now, just as Jill saw it. Sasha’s eyes were all over Ramie. And Ramie knew it. She ate it up!

  But it gets worse. While Larson pressed Jill to the roof’s ledge for a decisive feel-up, Jill peered around the side of his head to watch Ramie take Sasha’s hand and lead him away!

  Did Jill then throw Mr. Wandering Hands over the roof to follow Ramie downstairs? Did she make any effort whatsoever to discern precisely where Ramie took this complete and utter stranger?

  No. She was too busy making out with that skeleton. Larson got his hands all the way up her shirt with an attempt on the clasp of her bra before Jill even wondered where Ramie went.

  Some friend.

  I rush forward through Jilltime. She and Larson groped and grabbed at each other on the roof for a while before Jill, remembering the date and the likelihood of a middle-of-the-night sex change, urged him downstairs and out the door. Then, in a drunken stupor, she stumbled to Ramie’s room, put her ear to the door, and, hearing nothing, clomped off to her room, ripped off her clothes, and passed out.

  I replay the moment she put her ear to Ramie’s door. Absolute silence. No. Some traffic outside. A siren. People yelling on the sidewalk. But from within, nothing.

  I sit up on Ramie’s bed and do a quick calculation. Approximately twenty minutes passed between Ramie’s leading Sasha away by the hand (by the hand!) and Jill’s putting her ear to Ramie’s door. Theoretically, it’s possible that Ramie screwed the guy, then fell asleep. He could have woken up at any point in the night and snuck out.

  Wait a minute. I don’t even know if Ramie slept here last night.

  I bolt off the bed and rummage through all the clothes on Ramie’s bedroom floor. A black sweater, pale blue corduroy jeans, which she was wearing last night. That means either she slept here or she slunk back in the early morning hours to change before school.

  I run into my room, grab Jill’s cell phone, and call her. She doesn’t answer. She’s probably in class. I text her the following:

  Call me. Urgent.

  I drop to my bed and stare at the phone, which does not ring. Ramie turns either the ringer or the phone off when she’s in class, so it could be minutes or hours before she gets my text.

  In all honesty, I cannot rule out the possibility that Ramie had sex with Sasha last night. She was drunk, just like Jill. She was clearly enjoying Sasha’s attentions. Earlier in the evening, now that I remember it, she told Jill
he was “cute.”

  Cute! Since when is a fat, bearded scumhole cute?

  I have to lie down. I take a few deep breaths and try to stay calm. I don’t know that Ramie slept with Sasha. There could be a perfectly innocent explanation for everything. Well, not perfectly innocent. Jill and Ramie did invite them to the roof. Why would they do that?

  It occurs to me just then that in a moment of pitiful wrong-headedness, I sought out Larson’s companionship too. Not only did I ask if I could join him at Dexter’s, I took the mortifying further step of hoping (it makes me sick now) that he and his degenerate friends would like me.

  What a tool I am.

  Sitting up with a renewed sense of purpose, I throw on some clothes. Jill did not leave me a neat little envelope of cash this time, because she was too wasted to think of anyone but her own whoring self. I know her money and MetroCard are in her giant green bag, so I grab that and storm out the door.

  It’s cold and gray, and I am not wearing my coat, just jeans and a blue sweater. Still, I walk so briskly through the gloomy streets of Brooklyn that I’m sweating by the time I get to Bedford Avenue. Jill’s bag keeps banging into my ankles, so I throw it over my shoulder and keep walking. When I catch my reflection in a store window, however, I stop short. I look like a girl. I try to sling the bag across my chest, messenger-style, but the strap is so short I can only just squeeze my head through. Now it dangles like a giant green tumor from my armpit. I try to squeeze back out of it, but all I manage to do is spin around in a frustrated circle.

  “Are you all right?” A guy with a canvas backpack neatly mounted where it belongs stops and stares. “Do you need some help?” he says.

  “It’s eating me,” I say.

  He looks nervous, a reluctant Samaritan for sure. “Maybe if you …” He tries to lift the bag over my head, but this nearly dislocates my shoulder.

  “You know what?” I say. With a great tug, I move the bag to my back. The strap presses against my windpipe, but I manage to slide it down before suffocating. “I’m cool,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He nods and walks off.

  I check my reflection in the store window. From the front it looks like I’m wearing a green leather gun holster, which I can live with. From the side I am being humped by a turtle. But you know what? I don’t have time for this. I peel myself away and rush down Bedford Avenue toward the L train.