Carlton’s voice was deep but somehow lilting. We decided to meet for coffee the next evening. Simple. Internet dating wasn’t all that bad, I thought. And it was a good distraction from the dead girls now that Jarell was gone.
I met Carlton at Jack and the Bean. (When we were drinking, Bree and I used to joke that it was the wrong Jack, and we’d bring some of the right one to put in our coffee.) Carlton looked taller and thinner in person, dressed in a fawn-colored suede jacket, jeans, and heavy-soled brown leather shoes. He extended his hand to shake mine, quite formally, and we got iced coffee and sat outside on the sidewalk, breathing exhaust and watching the headlights of the cars curving away down the street.
He had a long face and a jagged nose, rather thin lips, but his eyes were pretty—round and hazel—if a bit myopic, behind his rectangular glasses.
“So how’s this online thing been for you?” I said, not sure how else to start, since he hadn’t yet.
“Strange. It hasn’t worked out so far. One woman, she said I wasn’t her type. But then we had so much in common and so she agreed to meet. She took one look at me and says, ‘This isn’t going to work for me,’ and leaves.”
“Oh, that’s brutal. People are so brutal.” I really felt for him. But maybe brutal was too strong a word. Brutal was what had happened to Michelle Babcock and the others. I almost brought it up but decided not to.
“How about you?” he asked.
“This is my first coffee date and so far it’s working for me.” His smile surprised me; it was warmer than I’d expected and erased thoughts of murder from my mind. “I like your paintings. I put a link to them on my blog.”
“Thank you. I’d like to see it. Is there a theme?”
“Things that make life bearable. It’s called Love Monster.”
“I’m flattered to be included. Why monster, though?”
“It started because my friend and I categorized men we dated as different monsters. Ghouls, Manticores, Zombies…”
“What would I be?”
My turn to smile. I figured that even though he was an artist, his posture, his formality, and his full-time job qualified him as my very first Goblin. “But in a good way,” I added when I told him.
“I think I’d prefer Vampire, even though they’ve been done to death, no pun intended.”
“That, too. I’d say you’re pretty elegant. And sexy.” As I said it, I felt my clit stir. We just stared at each other for a moment and I wondered if he was hard.
“Well, if I painted you, you’d be a Madonna.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, thinking of the delicate portraits that smelled like honey. Once I’d read that some male artists imagined that they painted with their dicks.
“You have something very maternal about you. But also, if I may say so, quite sexy, too.” His eyes moved over my body, down to my feet, in open-toed wedges, where his glance lingered.
My face warmed and I was instantly wet. We talked more about art and his work as an animator. LA, music, film. The subject matter wasn’t too personal, but the tone was pure pillow talk.
We went for drinks at Bar Wire in the lobby of the White Hotel, which had been built in the twenties and even after its remodel in the nineties was rumored to be haunted. In the dark room lit by red chandeliers he had a glass of wine and I had cranberry and soda. Leaned against the suede of his jacket. Hard to imagine it as once a live thing, violently skinned. It was so pretty.
“I like your jacket.” I felt drunk.
“I like your shoes.” That should have been a clue.
As he drank the wine, he smiled more and more, slid the hem of my thrift shop chain-link-print silk wrap dress up my thigh. The veins in his hands were big, which signified a strong blood flow. Tingles scurried across the back of my legs.
“I haven’t done this before with someone I’ve just met, and I hope you won’t be offended, but I was wondering if you wanted to get a room.”
There had been Jarell after Dash. Before Dash there had been others, more than was probably healthy for me. Every man I’d ever slept with, I had loved him in some way, found something to love about him. Not the men’s strength as much as their vulnerability. Here was this one, rejected by some Internet bitch; he was a talented artist, soft-spoken, well dressed, articulate, sophisticated. “I haven’t done this sober before, but yes.”
The disconcertingly charming smile again. “Meaning, gotten a room with someone, or gotten a room with someone you don’t know?”
“The latter.”
“Are you sober? I mean, not just at the moment?”
I nodded.
“Yes? Cranberry and soda, eh? Good for you. I admire that discipline. How many years then?”
“Eleven.”
“How about we round up to twelve and mess around half an hour for each year of your sobriety, Miss Catt? What do you say?”
We went across the street and bought condoms at the drugstore, giddy as teenagers. He paid for the room and I draped my scarf over the lamp to soften the light. His body was pale, pristine, lean, and yoga-toned. He knew how to place his cock in just the right spot. It made the tears spring to my eyes, and I worried that I’d scare him away. But he pulled out only to lick me, then slipped back in and fucked me just as I was still coming from the oral. He got up to use the bathroom and came back and showed me that he was hard again, standing next to the bed, sticking straight out. I rolled the condom on and we did it once more.
“I could go for hours,” he said, and I thought of Jarell with a pang of longing that I was ashamed of. Not only because I missed him but because I was the one who had ultimately pushed him away. At least I wasn’t thinking of Dash and the baby we would never have. Don’t think of Dash. I gripped harder on to Carlton’s lean torso and wept into his neck.
* * *
The next time we saw each other Carlton took me to a small, red-candle-lit restaurant in Venice. We sat in the window and ate white-bean hummus, spinach and baby shrimps on flatbread, and beet salad with feta cheese. When the waiter offered me wine, Carlton politely suggested pineapple-cucumber agua fresca. A dark-haired boy about Skylar’s age stood in the window holding up hand-painted bangles and Carlton said, “I like his entrepreneurial spirit,” and got up to go outside and buy me one. He slid it over my hand, and the weight of the bangle felt reassuring on my arm. It was painted with pink peonies on a red background, much like the dress I’d worn the night Dash left me.
I noticed that Carlton dropped his napkin three times during dinner and seemed to pause before he retrieved it. Once he said, “Lovely polish,” about my toenails. “What’s that color? Almost a pastel coral. It’s really nice.” He grinned.
I figured painters like colors, right?
After dinner we wandered down the street, past shops full of expensively distressed jeans and furniture, mosaics made from broken china and figurines, hedgehog-shaped teapots, orchids in birdcages, and tattooed and hennaed mannequins. Everything you needed to live in Los Angeles. I snapped photos for my blog; things looked magical to me again. There was even a new age bookstore that sold crystals and tarot cards. Carlton took my hand, pulled me inside, and asked the nose-ringed guy at the desk about the psychic reading they advertised.
When Nose Ring confirmed that, yes, a psychic was in, Carlton asked me if I’d like to try, and I agreed. What could it hurt? No one was going to predict an early death or anything. Yes, I really thought that.
We entered a small room where a woman with red hair sat at a table. “I don’t use any cards,” she said after we had introduced ourselves. “I go into a trance and speak to you about what I see. Sometimes I may make some odd sounds or gestures. Does that sound all right?”
We agreed. She seemed quite mild-mannered until she went “under.” Then she glared and barked at us like a dog. Carlton cringed, pushed his glasses back on his nose, and crossed his legs.
“You, you, you,” the woman said. “You are in pain. Yes, I sense such pain.” Bark bark. �
�All will be well. Yes, all will be well. You were in another life. Together. In another life. Husband and wife.” She turned her head toward Carlton but her eyes remained blank, as if she weren’t really seeing him. “You were an artist. All will be well.” To me: “You lived with his parents. In a cottage in the woods. You were angry at his mother. And she never accepted you.” Bark bark.
What the fuck? I knew not to look at Carlton because we would giggle. Hysterically. Stomach crunchingly. I just knew.
“Many lives together. You two. But lots of pain. All will be well. You killed her.”
I ventured to look at him and realized I was sitting with my legs crossed in a position that mirrored his. He didn’t turn his face to mine.
“But all will be well.”
I slid the peony bangle up to my elbow and bit down hard on the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. Nerves.
She turned her head directly to me and stared with those unseeing eyes. “All will be…” She stopped. She barked again. One hand went to her throat. She kept barking as if she couldn’t stop. I bit the inside of my mouth harder and avoided Carlton’s eyes. Finally the psychic was silent. She blinked at me. She said, “You will eventually learn to take care of yourself. To love yourself.”
“Then will all be well?” Carlton asked. He winked at me.
The psychic shook her head. “No,” she said. “Then you’ll be on the other side.”
We both burst out laughing; the tension was too much. The psychic stood up. She was out of her trance. I noticed creases in her face I hadn’t seen before, and the way her makeup caked around her nostrils; she looked as if she’d aged about ten years. “We’re finished now,” she said.
* * *
Carlton and I ended up back at the hotel. I wondered why he hadn’t suggested his place, but I didn’t spend too much time worrying about that. I was trying to concentrate on what it would be like to have his big cock inside me and avoiding what the psychic had said afterward. Then you’ll be on the other side. Dead.
Carlton undressed and lay on the bed watching me where I stood by the window that overlooked the streets below. I didn’t have a scarf with me to soften the light. Maybe I should turn off the lamp? His cock was standing straight up again. “Take off your panties,” he said.
I slipped them off from under my black satin, fifties-style dress, then started to unbutton it.
“No, leave the rest. Come sit over here, eh?” He took off his glasses; he meant sit on his face. I climbed up onto him, lifted the skirt of my dress, and eased my wetness down over his lips. He licked me gently, then harder, sucking softly on my clit as if it were dainty candy. I was worried my ass would suffocate him, but he seemed happy, stroking his cock in rhythm to my bounces.
“Now take out those big tits.”
I unbuttoned my dress and undid my bra. He flipped me over so I was on my back and he stared at my breasts while he continued to touch himself. “Such nice big, soft titties,” he said. Then he pushed up my skirt and slithered down so his mouth was on me again while he jammed his pelvis into the mattress. After I came, gasping for what felt like my last breath, tears sliding down my cheeks, he lay on his back and I lowered myself onto his legs and put him in my mouth.
“Do it sitting up. With your legs spread so I can see your pussy.”
I did this, too.
Then he said, “May I please ask you to do something else?”
I waited. It was the first time he’d asked, although his commands had been spoken in the same rather refined tone, as if he were telling me to bring him iced tea.
“Can I put my toes in your pussy?”
I just felt confused, not even that shocked. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. I might have agreed.
But then he frowned. “My wife never lets me do that either.”
Your what-the-fuck?
“She lives in Canada with her boyfriend but she visits me twice a year. We sort of sequester ourselves for that time and do yoga and meditate. She’s deeply spiritual. If I’m seeing someone, they have to understand I won’t be available at all for that time. It’s just this thing we do. She’s coming next week, actually.”
“I’m not feeling so great.” I skittered away from him, clutching my belly, suddenly aware of the way the flesh rolled there. The queasiness congealing in my gut was as much about me as him. Why had I done this? “I need to go now.”
He eyed me coldly and put his glasses back on. “Okay, I was just being honest. I’m sorry if that bothers you. She’s my soul mate and she left me for another man. Do you know what that’s like?” Behind the coldness I recognized raw hurt.
“Actually, I do,” I said, pulling on my clothes, sucking in my belly to tug up the zipper on the side of my dress. Adding to the humiliation, it caught my flesh with tiny metal teeth. Maybe he would tell me to stay. I might have stayed.
“She says she still loves me but she’s not attracted to me. It’s very painful.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. I have to go.”
He stood up, naked, facing me. He was still hard. “Why are you upset? Because I have a young, thin wife who’s a yoga teacher? Because I see her twice a year?” His voice was louder now, almost, maybe, somewhat desperate. “It’s not like you’re in love with me or anything. Are you? You’re not in love with me or something, so why should you care?”
I shouldn’t have cared. I just wanted to let him fuck me again. But he was obviously in love with his young, hot, spiritual yoga-teacher wife; I couldn’t even pick up my meditation beads anymore. And that crazy psychic said that Carlton had killed me in another life.
I stumbled to the door, holding my shoes. “It’s okay. Sorry. Thanks. Thank you. I’ll get a cab home.”
The hall smelled of air coolant and fried food. The red-and-gold carpet scratched under my feet. Ghosts wept in the mirrors.
After I got home and went to bed, I dreamed Carlton and I were walking around in a dark cavernous store filled with china and glass figurines of women that kept shattering into shards in my hands. The store seemed to go on forever. Finally we found a door. Inside there was a dark room with pedestals everywhere. On each one were red-veined white marble statues of naked female body parts. Feet, legs, torsos, breasts, heads.
Then I was one of them—just my head and nude, limbless torso balanced on a pedestal.
In the morning, I called Shana and told her about Carlton.
“You didn’t drink, did you?”
“No, we were at Bar Wire and he was, but I wasn’t tempted even. But why did I sleep with him? He could have been anybody. He could have been the Hollywood Killer.” (In spite of what the psychic had said, I was sure this wasn’t true.) “I make myself sick.” (This was true.)
“You need to call me and Bree every day,” she said. “And a minimum of three meetings a week. I’ve been way too easy on you.”
* * *
After the meeting Shana had to leave so I went to fellowship at Planet Pie alone, and the writer guy from the other day was there. He came over to my table and introduced himself. Dean Berringer.
His handshake was firm and his brown eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled. “I appreciated your share the other day, Catt,” he said. Five o’clock shadow, bushy eyebrows, a male smell. I missed that—burrowing into Dash’s armpit. A place to forget the world. “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Nothing too dramatic. I’d been sitting at my desk for way too long, stuck on this part of my book, and I knew I had to be with my people.”
“You’re a writer?” Feigning ignorance.
“Yeah, if you can call it that. In this town you’re not really unless it says screen in front of it.”
“In some places it has to say of actual book after,” I said.
“Yeah, but they don’t acknowledge me in New York. So Cal surrealism. Indie press. Postpunk LA.”
“Still,” I said.
“And you?”
“I just cut hair.”
He removed his hat to reveal a receding hairline, not like Cyan’s and Dash’s but getting there at a slower pace. “Can you do anything with this?”
“Leopard spots. Tiger stripes. Zebra.”
He put his hat back on. “I was thinking more along the lines of a magical potion to make it grow back.”
“It looks sexy on you,” I said. “I like bald men. High testosterone or something, right?” I was out of breath again like in the meeting, sweating through my turquoise nylon blouse.
“I’d like to take you out after a meeting sometime.”
* * *
I bought his first novel at Bookgarten, the only remaining local indie bookstore (they also sold garden supplies in order to make ends meet). The Eurydices was about a sculptor named Owen Orr whose wife dies of a brain tumor. Grief stricken, he becomes involved with his models, all of whom resemble his wife in some way. One of the women accuses him of raping her. All the women are part of a cult and they tear him to pieces in the end.
The book was well written and with its shock value made me forget everything else. Bree was always surprised that I could watch and read the scariest things, even alone by myself at night. I needed the book and movie monsters to chase away the ghosts in my head.
* * *
Dean Berringer wore a faded pink T-shirt with a skull on it. The skull had black roses for eyes. The whole thing, even the pink and the roses, only added to his masculine look. I thought, Uh-oh.
“My name’s Dean and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Dean.”
“The reason I’m sharing today is that I’ve been kind of disturbed by something.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m a writer and the book I’ve been working on is similar to what’s going on in the news, with that Hollywood Serial Killer thing. I realize this is just coincidence, but it is really upsetting to me; I can’t stop thinking about it. The guy in my book kills women and cuts off their body parts to construct a female zombie. Like these women they keep finding. I mean, the body parts. I mean, I write horror, I’ve been writing it for years, but nothing like this has ever happened. I guess it would be worse if I wrote and published the book first, but I don’t know. Like it was some copycat killing that I started. Anyway, thank you for letting me share.”
Beyond the Pale Motel Page 8
