Before the Flock

by David Inglish

  “See, what I say is right. You see more than you know.” He leans down and straightens her beach towel. “I should leave you to your dreams.”

  “No. Don’t go.”

  “I will come for you tonight,” he whispers, then quickly gets to his feet. “Yes, ma’am, one Coca-Cola, right away.”

  At dinner everything arrives on the left and departs on the right. There is a fork with three thick prongs, a knife with a straight edge and a swollen, rounded side but no sharp edge. Sophie holds the knife and remarks, “It’s different here. Is this a Jamaican knife?”

  “Yes, well, no, it’s for fish.” Giuseppe wipes his lips with a crisp white serviette.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He laughs. “We will be back in New York soon. You will be back at the models’ apartment. I have so much work. This is our last night together. I want to make it last. Let me show you something.” He walks behind Sophie, pulls out her chair, puts her sweater on her shoulders, and walks her onto the veranda. “Do you see that?”

  The sea is black with streaks of silver. A sailboat is tethered to a mooring. Sophie watches as each tiny wave tosses the prow up and the rope jerks it back down. It is like a restless palomino staring out at the empty plains, an Indian’s horse, captured by cowboys and saddled and bridled and longing for the grassy knolls of freedom.

  “Have you ever sailed the Caribbean under a full moon? It’s quite enchanting.”

  “I’m so sure it is.”

  “Shall we?” He extends his hand. “The captain is waiting.”

  She puts her hand in his. “I’m so tired right now. I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

  “But what about your dinner? We can bring it on the boat.”

  “You are so nice to me.” She squeezes his hand and looks in his eyes. “I totally appreciate it, but I just can’t go.” Her lips brush the heavy stubble on his cheek, and she says goodnight near the black hairs that sprout from his ear.

  Underneath the covers, Sophie has put on the Norma Kamali jacket and pleated skirt that Giuseppe gave her. She had contemplated a pair of fishnet pantyhose, but she looked at her tan legs and thought to herself, They are fine. In the mirror she painted her cheeks a rosy pink and put on eyeliner. She rolls onto her side and clicks out the light on the nightstand and waits in silent anticipation.

  She is awoken by the touch of a hand on her thigh, and she gasps for air.

  “Shhhhh!” Cyan places his other hand on her mouth. The covers are off the bed. “Come with me,” he says, and takes her hand.

  They cross the line of the hallway, and they are in the servants’ side of the house. A staircase appears like a shrunken and sullied reflection. It is narrow with steep, dimly lit steps and many turns. There are bedrooms with small doors that muffle the sounds of snoring. The heavy musk of the servants’ uniforms hangs in the hallway.

  They are in the kitchen with its broad stove and deep sinks. There is a separate door and then the garden is revealed in moonlit lines. A path takes them under the broad-leafed banana trees that steal the silvery light. Sophie hears something, and suddenly it seems as if they are stalking a giant beast, following its heartbeat toward the edge of the jungle. As they walk hand in hand down the path, the heartbeat is stronger and more varied; it races then rests then races again with a shriek of human voices. A different kind of light comes from a shack, yellow with shadows that throw their hands above their heads then disappear. Now the heartbeat is under the music, under a man’s mumbling, rhythmical voice. There’s tremendous momentum and laughter in it all—then it stops suddenly in silent syncopation and, one, two—it begins again with more urgency.

  “It’s dancehall style,” Cyan yells, and pulls her through the open door.

  Nothing changes when Sophie and Cyan walk in; it’s as if everyone is in a trance. The crowd is a momentous throng of faces and dreads and smiles and sweat. Cyan pulls a small bottle of golden water from his pocket. “Here. Drink this.”

  Sophie puts the bottle to her lips, and the rum is like mercury dripping from a broken thermometer, a metallic ball sprinting from corner to corner, running across a white sheet of paper, running yet staying intact. Sophie can feel it in her mouth, then her throat, then down to her heart, then in her veins, making everything gold and sunshine.

  Cyan takes the bottle from her, tips it upside down in his mouth. She grabs it back and sucks, waiting for the glow again. It doesn’t happen. She tries a larger gulp. It’s just going to her head now. It’s not the same. Cyan tries to pull the bottle from her hand; she smiles and swills more. He takes it, finishes it, pulls out another, and hands it to her, laughing.

  Then they are dancing. Sophie is shaking her head and her hair, and now she knows exactly what the mumbling man is saying. She even knows just when the music is going to stop. It stops. She stops. It starts. She starts, seamlessly, as if she controls it. She grabs Cyan and starts kissing him, sloppy, and pushing her hips into his in time with the music, harder and faster, then stopping, pushing away, looking in his eyes, then the music starts again…

  They are both covered in sweat. Her jacket and the second bottle are gone. She puts her hands on his chest and digs her nails into him, dropping her head back. He grabs the backs of her thighs and lifts her onto him. She can feel his hardness pressing between her legs. She digs her nails into his chest harder. Their teeth clank together. She turns her head to the side and sees the jungle. They are no longer inside, but the music seems just as loud. They are hidden from the moon beneath the overhang of the palapa, up against a white wall. He is pressing again, and she answers the pressure with quick and sudden thrusts of her own until she feels her panties being yanked hard into the corner of her thigh. No, she says silently. No He slips below, and she feels a tearing inside her. The tearing scares her. She opens her mouth and yells no, but she can’t hear it. He is taking it out. It was an accident. She softens. He thrusts it back in, dripping in moisture and sweat. She claws and pushes and opens her mouth again and thinks she yells stop. He does and she is relieved. Then he thrusts again harder and faster and again and again. And Sophie can feel it. She wills it to stop, and there is silence. In the moment of quiet, she screams “No!” and she can hear it this time, then the music starts again, and he is harder and faster, and she is torn and cold. He grunts, shudders, and falls away from her, spent and pitiful and drunk. She looks at him and doesn’t understand, puts her hand down between her legs and lifts it up to find blood and cum. Watching her from a distant blankness, he stumbles backward and falls onto the ground, arms sprawled out, pants around his thighs, his penis curving and pulsing and shrinking.

  “Why?” Sophie yells.

  “What?” he says. And he runs his hand from his penis up to his chest, leaving a trail of blood on his white linen shirt. He looks at the blood on his hand and smiles a crooked smile.

  The kitchen door is locked. Sophie bangs on the glass until Sissy opens it, startled, in a nightgown. Sissy reaches for Sophie, but Sophie pushes her away and moves quickly through the kitchen, through the pantry, and into the formal dining room, across the black-and-white marble floor to the window. The sailboat is still sitting there. It doesn’t look like anything.

  As she walks up each broad, carpeted step, she slides her hand along the thick, polished banister. Casablanca lilies sit in crystal vases on each landing.

  The thick door shuts, she turns the key, and an eternal sounding click reverberates through her room. She flips on the faucet and steam rises from the tub. In the scalding hot water, she scrubs and scrubs at her skin.

  In the morning Sophie looks for Giuseppe, but she finds the breakfast table unset and empty.

  “Where is Mr. Cassavetes?” she asks a servant.

  “New York,” the servant responds. “Ms. Clark, the car is waiting for you.”

  Sophie turns toward the door and sees another servant holding her purse and the dresses that Giuseppe had bought for her.

  “It is time for you
to go.”

  The Kingston airport is a giant tin roof with no walls. She asks the driver, “Where’s the plane?”

  He laughs. “Mr. Cassavetes flew home this morning. Go to that counter right there—they have your ticket.”

  When she checks in, the clerk says, “We have you flying to San Diego, Ms. Clark.”

  Sophie reaches over the counter toward the ticket.

  “Yes, we have you flying Kingston to Miami, Miami to Dallas, Dallas to San Diego.”

  “No. I’m supposed to go back to New York. Can you change it?”

  “We have a flight at four o’clock.” She types at her computer terminal. “That will be six hundred and fifty U.S. Cash or credit?” The clerk holds out her hand.

  “I don’t have any…”

  “I am sorry, ma’am. Your ticket is for San Diego.” The clerk puts the ticket on the counter and says, “Next.”

  On the plane, Sophie walks toward the back looking for 36E. It feels as if she were walking into the end of a dark sock. She finds her seat, a middle one between two sunburned, overweight tourists. The man has a baseball cap with flaps in the back that descend to his shoulders. The woman has her red hair done up in cornrows. The man and woman exchange suspicious glances; they seem to know each other.

  Finally Sophie lands in San Diego just before sunset and inhales the moist ocean air. She calls Jean from a pay phone. An hour later they arrive in Victor’s pickup. Audrey hops out and gets in the back. Sophie crawls over the tailgate and sits beside her. The sky is burnt orange in a crooked line above the hills. The tires vibrate and whir. Audrey notices Sophie’s distant gaze, slides over to Sophie’s lap, and holds her hand.

  The din of lockers, people, and bells is foreign. Teachers hand her stacks of papers—two weeks’ worth of work. The custodian opens her locker, and it is just as she left it, photos of puppies, a three-dimensional drawing of her name. In the cafeteria, planks of soggy dough masquerade as pizza.

  The next morning Jean shakes her bed. “It’s time to get up. Go to school.”

  Sophie opens her eyes, reluctant. “Again?”

  Jean smiles. “It’s not that bad.”

  After a week of days in this valley, car lots, strip malls, a lonely road that fills twice a day, she buys a pack of cigarettes and gives them to Audrey. Audrey takes off her headphones, nods her head, and tosses them on her stereo.

  “Have you ever been with a boy?” Sophie asks quickly, before Audrey can put her headphones back on.

  Audrey smiles. “Who is he?”

  “No one. I just don’t see what the difference is between a guy sticking his finger in you or sticking his thing in you. Except for it kind of hurts. Right? Isn’t that what you said?”

  “That goes away.”

  “Well, what’s the difference then?”

  “The guys like it more, mostly. I don’t know… It’s the closest two people can be.”

  “What if you thought you wanted to be close to someone, but you really didn’t?”

  “It’s totally one of those things that after you do it with someone—you either become really close or it’s over. I’ve seen it with my girlfriends. You’ll know.”

  “Can you get pregnant? The first time?”

  “You can. Just tell me who he is?”

  “No one. Where do you get the pills?”

  “Save it. Save it for someone you love.”

  “I just wanna know…”

  The next day she walks with Audrey to school. When she gets within a block, Sophie says, “I forgot something. I’ll see you later.”

  The day is bright and clear. She walks past the dry cleaners, past the resale boutique, past the McDonald’s. There is a large cube of a building with tinted windows facing the street—the Salvation Army. She walks in and is overcome by the smell of old clothes. “Can you tell me where the clinic is?” she asks a woman whose apron strings are cutting her into three layers like a cake.

  She finds the clinic, waits, and is soon sitting on the end of a table, naked. “I need the pill, and I think I have ingrown hairs,” she says to the doctor when he walks in, an older man with a slight tremble and white hair.

  The doctor bends down and stares through a rectangular magnifying glass with a bright pinpoint light. He stands up and says, “You can put your clothes on.”

  Sophie pulls her jeans up, puts on her T-shirt, and looks at the doctor anxiously.

  “Miss, I… you have herpes,” he says.

  The gray light in the room seems to dip darker. Sophie feels drained and nauseous. “How? Can this…”

  “Don’t be alarmed. The social stigma is much worse than the disease. It’s a virus that you will always have, the symptoms will come and go.”

  When she gets home, there is a letter addressed to Sophie Clark on the kitchen table. Sophie examines the typeface and green paper. She rips it open. It’s a check for fifteen hundred dollars made out to her. She folds it several times and stuffs it in her jeans.

  The next day after school, there’s another one. This time it’s for two thousand dollars. Two days later, there’s a third, again for fifteen hundred. In her bedroom she spreads the three checks out on the bed and shows them to Audrey.

  “What did you do?” Audrey asks.

  “Nothing.”

  Sophie calls Caitlin and asks her about the checks. “They’re yours, Sophie. You earned them.”

  “I want to come back.”

  “Sophie, this is a business for big girls. Mr. Cassavetes said he doesn’t think you’re ready.”

  “Send me a ticket.”

  EJ is stout like a drummer should be. His small, fat hands are perfectly constructed to hold a drumstick. He can split melons with those hands. And he plays angry. EJ creates divots in his drumheads. He splits snares. He gives orders: “Alright, Spewing, stand over there and follow my lead. You take two steps from that spot and I’m going to slap you. You fall out of the pocket and I’ll slap you. Come in nice and gentle…”

  “Foreplay! I hear ya! Lick it before you stick it!” Spewing yells.

  Kurt and EJ found Patrick Spewing under the rippling red and yellow streamers of a used-car lot in Pacific Beach. He was selling wheels to the wheeless. Spewing is spindly with spiky, frosted hair that jiggles when he talks.

  “Dude,” the Jovi tells him. “You’re like a dildo left on and vibrating.”

  “Thanks, bro. Let’s do this thing!”

  Kurt fingerpicks the melody to “Alone, Alone,” leaving open spaces between the chords for the Jovi. He dots them and brings them to life with harmonic notes and tones. Kurt sings above those notes in a falsetto that falls across the song like gray bolts of sunshine piercing cumulous clouds. Spewing uses every ounce of restraint he can muster, thumbing a muted bass string, letting the song build beneath him. It builds and builds until EJ snaps the snare drum and comes in with the heat, the dynamic jumps and the song is proud and serene, as if being alone is the only way. The song gains momentum until Kurt sings out his plea “I’m alone!”—holding on to the last word of the chorus as if it’s all he’s got left. The Jovi pulls in beneath with a guitar solo. The contemplative song ends in a rush and after the resonance slowly dies away, Kurt wheels around and yells: “GOD DAMN RIGHT! THAT’S WHAT FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS SOUNDS LIKE! NOBODY HAS THAT! NOBODY! YOU AND ME HAVE BEEN PLAYING MUSIC TOGETHER SINCE WE WERE KIDS! WE’RE LIKE THE BEATLES WHEN THEY QUIT—AND WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED! THIS IS THE BEST FUCKING BAND IN THE WORLD! PUT ANYBODY IN FRONT OF US AND WE’LL MAKE THEM CRY! WE’LL MAKE THEM WANT TO QUIT MUSIC!”

  “Yeah, Kurt,” the Jovi says. “It sounded good.”

  The door at the end of the studio swings open and a backlit figure about the height of a fireplug appears in a leather duster holding a scepter in one hand and a shrunken human skull in the other. The figure puts the stick in the base of the skull, makes a screwing motion, then the two pieces fall apart.

  EJ asks, “What happened to your wand, Ivo?”

  “W
hat’s with this fucking thing? Is not wand, is staff of authority. Supposed to make shitfuckers pay for practice. You going to fucking pay Ivo for practice this time? No more hickory dickory dock! You fucking pay Ivo!” Ivo shakes the headless staff of authority at the band. “What is with you guys? One day it’s tits and ass, the next day it’s balls on the chin!”

  The Jovi looks at EJ and raises his eyebrows.

  EJ says, “Ivo’s a self-starter like me. He’s Russian, but he taught himself the English language by watching Andrew Dice Clay videos. Hey, Ivo, I told you it’s going to be tits and ass. Now put down the stick.”

  “Okay. You say tits and ass, but then you try to make me give you balls on the chin.”

  In an hour, it’s balls on the chin. Kurt brought three dollars. His share is ten.

  Kurt says, “Ivo, believe me, when we’re the biggest band in the world, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Fuck you. Pay me.”

  The Jovi covers for Kurt.

  Five days later they play for the Windansea Surf Club at the Pumphouse. It’s like the old days. They burn through all the Thunderstick songs and start playing old Full Nelson Mandela songs.

  Then Doors covers: Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer

  Then Lou Reed covers: Thought of you as my mountaintop

  Then Iggy Pop covers: I’m bored I’m the chairman of the bored

  It’s like being home.

  When Sophie arrives back in New York it’s November 14, 1982. Some of the girls in the model’s apartment have gone back to school. Some have gone to Paris or Milan. New girls have arrived from Topeka and Nashville and Toronto. Sophie wants to feel magical again. She wants to feel the swan feathers brush against her skin, she wants to see the unicorn and hear the voices, but instead she just sees the dirt and filth of the city. Standing on the street corner, she can’t help but gaze into the big, open, iron drain at her feet. When she looks up she notices that men are staring at her and a cold shiver of terror runs through her body.