by Julia Kent
“Charlotte? You in there?” Maggie, one of my fellow Resident Directors.
“Come in, but be quiet,” I said.
Technically, I wasn’t on duty. When you live in a residence hall with three hundred undergraduates, boundaries fade fast. You have to hold your ground. I lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the first floor, with my office right next door. Sparsely furnished, but it did the trick. Ancient couch, a desk and chair, and a ton of filing cabinets that might have been useful in the past, but with the “paperless university” in full force, I found them useless.
Maggie entered the room and swiftly shut the door. Bright green hair and Day-Glo blue eyes were the first thing you noticed about her, and then you saw the nose piercing. Five earrings on one ear. And a giant scar up the side of one prominent cheekbone. She was five years older than me and we were grad school classmates, both second years in the two-year master’s degree program that would probably stretch into three years for us, given our full-time work in the dorms.
Maggie had been viciously attacked and raped on her midwestern campus five years ago while she was a junior. The incident made headlines nationwide and she’d been in ICU for weeks. She hated pity. Despised it. So she filtered the world through reactions to her appearance.
It seemed to work, because assholes pretty much gave her wide berth and nice people deferred to her.
“You’re missing a diversity training meeting,” she whispered, eyeing my orders. “Oooh, a glow-in-the-dark butt plug?”
“New this summer. BPA free,” I added in my best salesperson voice. We both giggled. Maggie was the only person at the university who knew about my moonlighting.
Her hand reached for mine. I knew what was coming and my stomach clenched before she even opened her mouth. Her eyes, so fierce and guarded, went soft. “I have one for you,” she said.
“Shit.” My hand squeezed hers back. “Who?”
“Marian on the second floor.”
“Marian? The k-through-twelve Catholic girl who goes home every weekend?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. Marian was a freshman, and she’d only been here for three weeks. Two of those had been Freshman Orientation.
Maggie sighed and let go of my hand. She picked up a stack of bright sticky notes and worried them. “I know. She goes home to her boyfriend every weekend. I guess the ‘summer goodbye’ hit the jackpot.”
“Fuck.”
“From shit to fuck. That about says it all.”
“How far along is she?” Maggie sent the pregnant students to me. I sent the victims of sexual and domestic violence to her. It was an uneasy division of labor, but it seemed to work.
“She just missed her period. Says she’s normally like clockwork. Can you visit her today? Her roommate is freaking out because Marian crawled into the top bunk, pulled the covers over her head, and refuses to talk.”
I would, too, I thought. In fact, I had…
“Sure. No problem.” Suddenly the sex toy orders seemed frivolous. Almost sacrilegious.
“You okay to handle this?”
“Of course I am.” I could hear my own defensiveness.
Her face shifted to compassion. More for me than for Marian. “C’mon, Charlotte.”
I consciously relaxed my shoulders, which felt like they were a foot above my ears. She was right.
“I just…I saw Liam last night.”
Her eyes flew open so wide I could see the perimeter of her contact lenses against the expanse of the whites of her eyes.
“Jesus Christ!”
“He thinks he is,” I muttered.
“Where did you see him?”
I must have blushed, because she added, “Oh, this is going to be a good one.” A smart cookie, Maggie looked at the stack of orders and got a look of dawning comprehension. “Not at the sex toy party!” she gasped, more amused than horrified.
“Keep your voice down!” It wasn’t beyond the undergrads to eavesdrop and post juicy bits on Snapchat and Twitter.
“It was! Holy shit, Charlotte, you saw your asshole ex at a sex toy party you were hosting?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Uh…” I could hear the click in my throat as I swallowed. Thinking about him all night and day was one thing, but this felt dangerous. Saying it aloud made it real.
She gave me a knowing look. “If you don’t share, it’ll just fester, and then you won’t be able to move on.”
What if I don’t want to move on?
She was right (again). “He was the stripper,” I admitted.
Maggie started choking. Kind of like Sybil last night. Hmmm.
“He was the stripper? The son of a bitch dumps you over the phone while you’re pregnant and the first time you see him, years later, is at a sex toy party where he’s one of the sex toys?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds so ridiculous…”
“It is ridiculous.” She couldn’t stop gasping with laughter. “Are you okay?” Maggie flipped between being concerned for me and howling with uncontrollable laughter.
I knew the feeling.
“He, well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” I added.
“How?” She hooted. “How could it possibly get more complicated?”
“His mother was there.”
All her laughter died in her throat and she looked at me like I told her he’d just eaten cow manure out of a fellow stripper’s belly button. “His mom…what? Was she part of his act?”
“GROSS!” I shouted.
Tap tap tap.
I shot her a look that could kill. “Get it together.” I frantically shuffled the stack of orders and shoved them in a desk drawer. Then I called out, “Come in.”
It was Tessa from the third floor. Tessa was a fashion design major who talked at a rate of two hundred words per second. Her hair color changed with every boyfriend, and she’d only been here for three weeks. Like Marian, she was a freshman.
Unlike Marian, she was here every weekend and seemed to enjoy sampling the local cuisine of men.
“So, oh! Hi, Maggie. So, um, Charlotte, I’m, like, still having that problem with Becca. She’s using my special peppermint shampoo from back home, the stuff that costs $32 a bottle and that my hair stylist says I absolutely, positively must use for optimal scalp protein development. If I don’t use it my hair will be a crime. A CRIME! And Becca says she doesn’t use it but I know she does because after her showers I can smell peppermint, and even though she says it’s her cheap generic knockoff, there’s a difference. A definite difference!”
Tessa said all of this in one breath. Maggie and I exchanged a look as Tessa took in a great whoop of air and continued.
“So she’s, like, using my stuff and says she’s not, and I really wouldn’t care except she brings her smelly boyfriend over and kicks him out promptly at curfew, because she’s not a BAD person. Really. She’s not. But I hate coming home to find a scrunchie on the door handle—”
Maggie’s left eyebrow shot up at this.
“—and knowing I need to stay away. I mean, her boyfriend has his own dorm room over in Entenman! Why do I have to be the one to give in and sacrifice for her all the time? It’s totally unfair, and she even didn’t pay her share of the tip for the pizza we ordered last week because she said she only had $3 and everyone’s share was $3.50, but she had quarters to do laundry—”
Maggie held up her palm and Tessa stopped, panting hard.
“Tl; DR,” Maggie said.
Tessa understood internet speak, because Tl; DR stands for too long; didn’t read on message boards.
In other words: say it simpler.
“Becca’s a mooch and kind of taking advantage of me and I don’t know what to do,” Tessa blurted out.
Maggie smiled and stood. “I’ll take care of this,” she whispered to me, patting my shoulder.
Thank you, I mouthed.
“And let’s do coffee in the morning before staff
meeting. We have more to talk about.” And then she winked.
The door closed and I let out a huge exhale. My computer screen started blinking, warning me that the order I started entering before Maggie knocked was about to time out. I finished it, and moved on to the next one.
The handwriting was a chicken scrawl, instantly recognizable.
Liam’s.
Liam ordered sex toys from my party? Oh, Maggie, the story just gets better…
All the basics were there, but he left off his address. Hmm. Credit card info was there. It was a fairly big order, and I’d make about $25 in commission from it.
That didn’t even cover the copay for my D&C five years ago.
He’d ordered three items: a half-gallon jug of our newest warming gel, a flesh tunnel simulator that attaches to a tablet and offers video options for real-life fun, and a blowup female doll, complete with three fuckable holes and “real-life ab-clench simulation.”
Stay classy, Liam.
Under delivery options it said: in person.
In person.
Chapter Three
Liam
After we performed at the resort on the island of Eden, doors flew open. Promoters suddenly knew who we were. When Darla called to try to book a gig people said “yes” at twice the rate as before, and we were offered dirt-cheap, but crappy, practice space in the basement of a decrepit warehouse not far from Louise’s entertainment offices.
It may have been filled with mildew and mouse droppings, but it was a secured, padlocked space where we could make noise and leave our equipment.
All four of us congregated there, doing sound checks and warming up instruments while Darla and Amy hauled vacuum cleaners and masks and cleaning equipment in.
“This is so gender role normed,” Amy groused as she plugged in to hoover the place.
“Someone has to clean it if we’re going to hang out here, and the guys already hauled all the wood and scrap metal away last week,” Darla pointed out. No shit. We busted our asses. The last people to use the space were “materials artists,” whatever the fuck that means. Mostly it meant they left a mess and we had to clean it in exchange for free rent.
Totally worth it. It was Darla and Amy’s turn to help. Amy turned the vacuum on with a snarl and pointed the hose up, sucking spiderwebs like she was exacting revenge.
Darla, meanwhile, tackled the floor.
My ass buzzed and I pulled out my phone. Shit. My dad. I knew it was coming, but still…not now.
Not ever, but especially not now.
“You answering that?” Sam asked, impatience in his voice. We both had a gig and the hours to practice were limited.
“Nope.”
“It’s a parent,” Trevor said dryly. He was right, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Easier to ignore him.
We had to practice without Joe, who had just gone to Philly last week for year two of torture. Whatever he got out of going to Penn Law was a mystery to me. The band was getting bigger and better, and he and Trevor were wasting it all on law school and pleasing their parents. Kissasses.
My mom’s words invaded my brain. “Questionable morals.”
Fuck that. Doing something you hate because you think you’ll gain acceptance from other people is what I call “questionable morals.”
Bzzz.
I shut my phone off.
Even with the roar of two vacuum cleaners in the distance, we limped through some new songs, getting volume and pacing down. Later, we’d record our better efforts and send them to Joe, who would work on un-wrinkling the kinks. Once a month, we agreed, he’d come back for three days and jam through it all. He also promised to come back for every single one of our gigs, even if it meant he missed class. Cool.
The vacuums stopped abruptly while Trevor and I were singing a chorus, the abrupt loss of white noise making our voices crack in surprise. Sam’s beat faltered and we all gave up.
“You done?” Trevor asked Darla.
“I got enough mouse turds in here to fertilize an entire organic farm in Amherst,” she said.
“Better in there than on the floor. Thank you,” he said, reaching for her and trying to kiss her.
“I’m covered in mouse turd dust,” she complained, still wearing her breathing mask. Trevor kissed the center of it.
“Not the worst thing I’ve ever kissed.” He muttered something in her ear and I heard the word “blowfish.” She giggled.
A massive wall of Charlotte slammed through me. Red lips. That ass. The look she gave me when I stripped in the kitchen. Those shaded eyes, telling me everything and nothing in one glowering glance.
Hard again.
God damn Charlotte.
“You look like you’re a million miles away, Liam,” Darla said. Amy’s eyes flickered toward me and she seemed dangerously contemplative. She was ready to say something constantly, like she was piecing something together, and I hated not knowing what she might say or do. The unpredictability was killing me, because Amy was…
A bridge. A strange one. After Charlotte cheated on me I went crazy, sleeping with anyone who would have me, and turned to Amy in a moment of weakness. To be fair, she did the same, and we didn’t so much use each other as we took refuge in each other’s pain.
Sam had been the source of hers, and we had an uneasy friendship these days.
Charlotte had been the source of mine, and Amy and Charlotte…I just didn’t know. They’d been friends in high school. Not great friends, but they’d traveled in the same circles. If Amy knew why Charlotte had fucked some other guy while claiming to love me, she’d never said a word.
I always wondered why, but sometimes it’s better not to ask and know. The truth hurts so much more than just shutting down. Besides, what was I supposed to say—“Hey, Amy, why did Charlotte think I wasn’t enough? Why did she turn to some other guy and let him stuff her hole and lie to me about it when he knocked her up?”
I’d rather cut off my own dick with my car keys.
“I’m fine. My old man is trying to get me on the phone so he can scream at me for stripping,” I told Darla, grabbing the vacuum at the neck and lugging it toward the door.
“Seeing your old girlfriend threw you for a loop, didn’t it?” Darla replied with a look that said she wasn’t believing my bullshit. I wouldn’t either if I weren’t me.
“That? No. Not really. No big deal.”
“And being felt up by your mom—”
“That fucking sucked.” My voice sounded like grinding glass.
Everyone went quiet.
Bzzz. Trevor grabbed his phone and grimaced, holding it out for me to see.
“It’s your dad,” he announced. “It’s bad enough my own dad calls me to hound me, but now yours?”
I shrugged, pretending not to care. “He wants to find me, he can just wait. I control my own time. My own money. My own life.”
Sam made a polite golf clap. But he was grinning. “Can’t reattach the apron strings once you cut them,” he said.
“They sure as hell do try, don’t they?” I said, dropping the vacuum and reaching for my guitar, plucking out the first few chords of the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Because you can’t.
Charlotte
Two weeks after seeing Liam, the order came in. His was—of course—the only one that was an in-person, hand delivery. Some parties involve hand deliveries, mostly for women who don’t want husbands or children to come home and open the package and get a big, buzzing surprise, but the group at that bachelorette party was worldly and nonchalant.
Plus, I earned more than $400 for a night’s work. If I had to deliver one package, it was worth it.
Even if it involved seeing Liam.
I could call him. I could email or text or just try to find his address and mail his plastic girlfriend to him. With a DVD copy of Lars and the Real Girl.
He wanted to see me. Right? He wouldn’t have asked for in-person delive
ry otherwise.
I hadn’t heard a word from him or his mom since the bachelorette party. Sybil was spitting nails, and stormed out with apologies to the bride that night. She missed Liam’s flesh show, but I suspect that was the point.
The night passed in such a blur and it was hard to believe two weeks had disappeared in a blip. Marian’s pregnancy turned out to be a late period, her cries of happiness and screams for a tampon loud enough to be heard through two floors. Her friends took her out and got her nice and drunk that night.
And the next morning I escorted her to campus health services for an appointment to discuss birth control methods with one of the nurses.
The usual hustle and bustle of the start of the semester kicked in. I felt old. Twenty-four and I felt old already, into my second year of grad school. Being a Resident Director was a lot like I imagined motherhood, managing too many details and far too many emotions from other people, and you’re expected to do it all with grace.
A pang, five years old, resonated deep within. Mother.
“You are a mother and always will be,” my grief counselor had told me after the D&C. After I told her I’d planned to keep and raise the baby. At six weeks I’d been unsure. At nine I had panicked. And at ten weeks a calm had descended. I knew what I wanted to do, but I was grateful I also had choices.
Losing the baby to miscarriage hadn’t been anywhere on my list of options. It took the choice away from me, and while there was a tiny layer of relief, there was so much sorrow. When the bleeding started and the cramping seized me, I realized quickly that no matter how much we think we’re in control, we aren’t.
And that’s what I grieved most.
A shadow had hung over me then. And now, here it was, re-emerging, hovering, blocking out the light. Liam.
And he wanted to see me “in person.”
Fuck you, Liam. Five years and one baby and you reject me?
I’ll see you on my own terms.
I logged in to my computer and began a search, finding what I needed within a minute.
You show up unexpectedly at my job?
One good turn deserves another.
