Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “Are you kidding?” He grinned. “Jesus, Bella. You know, I actually still jerk off to that sometimes.”

  He planted himself in an ugly recliner, his legs spread slightly, his face happy and expectant. Pushing him back farther into the cushions, I dropped to my knees and took him in my mouth. When he started to moan, though, I stopped. “Okay. That’s just the opener. Remember that time at Ann-Marie’s?”

  Ann-Marie Larkin’s house in Dry Lake had a paneled bar in the basement; one night, while everybody else in the band was upstairs doing shrooms and watching the play-offs, Zack and I had fucked on top of it. We’d thought we were being outrageously kinky.

  Hurrying back to his kitchen now, we cleared off his breakfast counter. A jumbo bottle of ibuprofen rolled across the tiles, rattling like a maraca. Zack swept the protein powder and a stack of junk mail into a bin.

  “Oh, wait, hang on!” I shouted. Retrieving my phone, I scrolled through my music and punched Play. The deliciously nasty, bump-and-grind riff of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” blasted tinnily through the kitchen. “Remember this? Wasn’t this the exact song that was playing? I’ve made a whole playlist. INXS, New Order, Concrete Blonde.”

  “Wow,” Zack said. “You’ve been busy.” He started to kiss my nipples. I hoisted myself up onto the countertop, smiling with what I hoped was seductive savagery. He regarded me then with that look—that look I’d been craving all along—of astonishment and reverence with just a tiny sparkle of unease and began to mount me atop the counter.

  Suddenly, he stopped. “Oh. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on!” he shouted. “If we’re doing historical reenactments here—Jesus fucking Christ, how could I forget?” Yanking open his freezer, he pulled out a bottle of tequila. “The ‘Donnarita’!”

  He stared at me, then at the tequila bottle, and started to laugh his low, crazy laugh.

  “Oh. My. God.” I had totally forgotten. Or had I? I clamped my hands over my mouth.

  “Lie back, princess. You asked for it.”

  With exquisite care, he held the bottle aloft and slowly poured the tequila over me as if anointing me with oil, as if he were preparing to flambé me. Its coolness was a shock, and I heard myself squealing as it streamed between my breasts and pooled around my navel and ran down my thighs—just as it had back at the Larkins’—because when else do you pour liquor and foodstuffs all over your body during sex, except when you’re young?—and back in Dry Lake, there had been salt and lime wedges involved, too, if I remembered correctly—and just as he had then, Zack was smiling down at me triumphantly. For one quick second, my older self kicked in. Stop. You. Are. An alkie. How on earth was this in any way a good idea? But as Zack began to lick the liquor teasingly off my neck, tracing the rivulets of it down over my skin as if it were a map, I asked myself, I’m not actually drinking now, am I? Being doused with alcohol didn’t make you drunk any more than letting someone snort cocaine off your stomach made you high. Surely, I could pass any fucking Breathalyzer test in the nation. And as he began to part my thighs and lick off all the tequila—ow, okay, that burned a little—my entire body started to respond, and that pretty much settled it—and I found myself actually pouring more Patrón between my legs for Zack just to help things along. “Hey,” he said resurfacing. He grabbed the bottle. “That’s my job. I’m the bartender here.”

  “Then more, please. Everywhere but in my mouth.”

  His lips, his fingers, his shoulders: everything now reeked of tequila. Skin and sex and the sharp, scorching smell of alcohol. I could not absorb enough of it; I was so wildly turned on, I thought I would rocket right out of my skin. Zack licked all of me right up to the insides of my thighs. I could feel myself starting to writhe. Just before homing in, he attempted to shift me around on the counter slightly so my head didn’t dangle over the edge.

  “No. Let it go,” I whispered. I was dizzy, and I wanted to be dizzier. I pushed his head back down and inhaled the scent of tequila as deeply as I could. “Obliterate me.”

  He released me and suddenly the entire world turned upside down. The kitchen appliances, his weight-lifting bench, and a cheap spotlight lamp in the corner now hung from ceiling. He nuzzled and buried his tongue deeper and I felt myself clench and scream—and when I came—volcanically—he moved up immediately and mounted me. I closed my eyes, and Zack began to pump away inside me as if he were performing CPR. There was nothing left of us but hot flesh and muscle and liquid and pulse, heaving like a singular organism, my arms locked around his damp back, his mouth fused to my neck—Echo and the Bunnymen were on rotation now—“Lips like sugar / Sugar kisses” wailing hauntingly through the room—each thrust pushing us back through time, all the way back to Dry Lake, Michigan, until we were still just two teenagers now in a friend’s grungy basement fucking on top of a paneled bar with a novelty Schlitz lamp hanging over it garlanded with Mardi Gras beads. Soaked in tequila, but no alcoholism, no corrosion, no bills or debts or failure. It was just Donna and Zack in a singular, ecstatic moment, crazed with love, aware of nothing but our young bodies—and a little electric box full of music. Both of us full of desire. Full of nothing but hope. I heard myself scream. I heard myself cry.

  Afterward, we somehow managed to stumble to his bed and flop down side by side. Zack reached over and squeezed my hand chummily.

  “Better now?” He said this is an oddly paternal way, as if I were a patient.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were closed. “You just seemed to be in some sort of state. Like, insanely horny.”

  I felt judged suddenly. Horny? I hated that word; it sounded reptilian. “Well. Weren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Obviously.” Rolling over, he cracked his back and winced. “Fuck.” He twisted until his spine cracked a second time, then turned on his side to face me. He ran his index finger over my hip. “So. Belladonna Cohen. Just how married are you, anyway?”

  I felt stung. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “O-kay? So you just want to show up after twenty-six years.”

  “I just want to be here with you, Zack. Right here, right now. This life we have. Ours. That nobody else has ever touched.” Leaning over, I kissed him softly this time, lingeringly. “Can’t you please do that? Just be here with me? In our own little bubble? Beyond all space and time?”

  He nodded at me almost sadly. “Come here,” he said quietly. He pulled me to him, and we spooned, his muscled chest pressed against my back. After a moment, he said, “Sometimes, I get so lonely, I feel like a piece of old film. When it melts in the projector.”

  Tightening his arm around me, I nodded. I listened to us breathe in unison.

  “It’s like, I’m just—I’m just struggling to keep my head above the water all the time, you know?”

  He pressed his chin against my shoulder. Neither of us said anything. Bronski Beat was playing now, Jimmy Somerville’s plaintive falsetto pleading, “Tell me why-hy-hy?”

  “Fuck,” Zack said into my neck. “Are we still listening to New Wave?”

  “What?” I twisted around. “These are all our old songs, Zack. I thought you liked them.”

  He kissed me on the shoulder. “Nah. I only pretended to because you were so into it.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon, Bella. I’m a redneck. I cashed in some serious chits to work the Fish Fry just so I could see Kid Rock.”

  My legs were so jellied, they felt like they would buckle, but I heaved myself up off the bed and went and got my phone from the kitchen and switched off the music. I felt strangely rebuffed. Back in the bedroom, I noticed the sliding, mirrored door to his closet.

  “Hey stand up. Come here.”

  Positioning Zack behind me, I posed him like a mannequin, with one of his arms snaked down around my waist, his other hand lightly cupping my breast. I sucked in my cheeks and elevated my chin in a sultry, defiant way and motioned for him to kiss me on the neck. Together, we gazed at our reflect
ion. We looked undeniably like grown-ups now, but still. There it was. Still erotic.

  “Remember this? In my bedroom?”

  Zack nodded—more wistfully than I’d expected. “Our cover. Rolling Stone. 1987.”

  We locked eyes in the mirror. “Zack. Are we just pathetic now?”

  “Nuh-uh. Not at all. Look at us. We are fucking on fire. We are fucking bringing it, man.” Grabbing his phone, he aimed it at the mirror. “Hotness for posterity.”

  “What? No. Stop! Don’t!” I could only imagine how a nude photo could get away from him over the internet. I’d once even sat Austin and Ashley down and given them a lecture about posting pictures, though it hadn’t gone at all well.

  He snatched up my phone instead. “We’ll use yours, then. Just take one look at how fucking hot we are. You are. Then you can delete it.”

  I stared down at the screen. Through the lens of his desire, I did look actually gorgeous, indomitable. I was a goddess rising from the sea-foam, one arm folded luxuriantly behind her head. “Wanna few more?”

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I found myself giggling and flouncing back down on the bare mattress and posing. “I’m going to delete these as soon as you take them.”

  “Whatever. Your prerogative. Okay, head back. I’m just going to focus on your neck and your tits,” he directed. “Oh, fuck, that’s good. Fuck, that’s hot. Now arch your back. Okay, baby, I’m comin’ in.” He lay down naked beside me. “No, delete those! Delete those right away!” I shrieked, laughing.

  “Okay, okay, I am.” He pressed the button, tossed the phone back on the nightstand. Then he leaned down to kiss me. “Ow. Hang on. Be right back.” I watched his beautiful shoulders in the gold half-light of the doorway as he disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with the tequila and a beveled shot glass. “You want?” he asked. I shook my head; as drained as I was now, it was easier to say no. He poured himself two fingers’ worth of Patrón, tossed it back quickly, then shook his head like a wet dog shaking himself dry. Twisting again, he cracked his spine. It sounded like a tree branch breaking. He lay back down beside me. “Do you mind just kneading my lower back?” He guided my hands down to his lumbar area. “Oh, man, that’s good. That’s so good.”

  “You pulled your back out?”

  “What? Of course not. Look at me. I’m in fucking great shape. I’m in better shape than I was when I was fucking sixteen. I’ve just been pulling chain and lifting shit all day like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, half the guys on my crew are in way worse shape than I am.”

  He sat up, scratched his scalp vigorously with both hands, blinked around the room. “The doctors, you know, they prescribe us all these painkillers. Muscle relaxants and all sorts of shit. But I stay away from them. Big Pharma, man, they deliberately want to get us all hooked on opioids.”

  He looked at me darkly. “Big Pharma, you know, they paid Congress and the FDA to say all their shit is safe, then got all these doctors to prescribe it like candy—and then Phizer, the AMA, the politicians—all of them made a killing on the stock market.” He snorted, grabbed a pillow, punched it into shape, and settled it under his head.

  “They got half of America hooked on opioids, then stopped prescriptions. So now, of course, everyone’s been switching to heroin. Which—guess what?—the American government just happens to be shipping in covertly from Afghanistan in its secret deals with the warlords—”

  “Oh, Zack,” I said softly, reaching for his hand.

  “Hey, I read the fucking news, Donna—go on the alter-net—you’ll see for yourself. Wall Street and Big Pharma and the White House, they’re the real dealers, not all those poor dumb fucks in prison. It’s one giant circle-jerk.” Unable to get comfortable, he stood up and stretched. “They’ve created an entire nation of addicts so they’ll have an endless profit machine.” He picked up the bottle of tequila and waggled it at me for emphasis. “So I’ll just stick with my old friends Jose Cuervo and Patrón here, thank you. Oh, and check this out.” Proudly, he slid open the mirrored closet. Stacks of cartons were piled up inside to the ceiling.

  “Ammo. Night-vision goggles. A .45, a Beretta, and an AR-15.” He pointed to a box stamped MEALS-READY-TO-EAT, MENUS 13–24. “A solar-powered generator. A water purifier.” He pointed at me. “Barbara Mandrell had the right fucking idea, man. When the time comes, you’re gonna want plenty of guns and a private helicopter. You’re going to be glad you know me, Bella. I’m telling you right now.”

  I stared at him. The sight of all these stockpiles in his closet was disturbing. Yet then, I saw in my mind the signal house by the tracks in Dry Lake again. Zack with his boom box and his sleeping bag and his hurricane lantern. He was still the same boy, trying to survive by himself in the woods. I knew where he came from.

  “Oh, Zachary,” I said softly.

  “One day, Bella. Shit’s going to go down. Shit’s gonna get real.” He announced almost happily, “And the Zakkolator’s ready!”

  He flexed his biceps. “Ha. Ha. Speaking of guns.” He picked up my phone and aimed it at his muscle. “One more for the ladies!”

  A series of loud musical, staccato bleats went off in his hand.

  “Whoa, shit. You’ve got an incoming call.” He squinted at the screen. “Someone named Austin is trying to Skype you?”

  I ran down the steps to the apartment complex’s small, grungy vestibule, my ballet slippers from Walmart flopping off my heels; I’d just grabbed random items to wear out of my suitcase. “Oh, Shit, shit, shit.” I looked around frantically for a private place to call Austin back. Clearly, something bad had happened back in Michigan. Joey had been driving with his broken nose and skidded. He and Austin had been shot at by some lunatic with an AK-47 in a supermarket—these were the times we were living in now. Or Ashley: Had there been a terrorist attack in London?

  It could only be something catastrophic because Austin had never once Skyped me before in his entire life and because—I realized now with horror—I deserved it. Look at me, running off, leaving my family to go buy a guitar and a miniskirt and cavort naked with my lover, dousing myself with tequila like Chanel No. 5. How dare I expect to get away with this? It was a Newtonian law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  There was an old love seat in the vestibule by the mailboxes. “Austin?” I shouted as my Skype call finally went through. “Austin, what’s wrong?”

  Austin’s face appeared pixelated over the tiny screen—he looked more like an anime graphic than his real self—the Wi-Fi reception was patchy at best—and he said something, but it sounded like those recordings of whales they played at the aquarium.

  “Hang on a sec,” I shouted. “Shit, I can’t get a good signal.” I stepped outside into the parking lot, but it was dark now, and the sound of the nearby interstate was too loud. Finally, I walked around to the side of the building and sat down on the corroding metal steps beneath a sodium light.

  My son’s face came into focus, his hair scraggy and unwashed. I could see in the background his bulletin board covered with skateboarding posters and his graffiti art, his half-opened closet.

  “Uh, hey Mom. Do you know your Apple password for the TV?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m trying to reset the TV for Dad. So he can watch Game of Thrones? His password doesn’t work anymore. I dunno. I think he changed it, then forgot.”

  “You want my password,” I said slowly. “You’re calling me all the way here in Nashville so you can program the television.” Leaning back against the steps, I shut my eyes. The glamour: It never ended in my life, because it had never, ever started.

  “Sorry. Dad said not to bother you. But Uncle Reggie and Stew and Marty are over to watch Game of Thrones and Dad logged out or something by accident.”

  Oh good God. I massaged the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes and looked up the code on my phone and gave it to him.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Um,
well. I was also, sort of, wondering.” He shifted around. I saw a flash of blond wood. The Traveler Guitar I’d bought him. “Would you maybe be able to help me with my homework? Like, could you teach me a few guitar chords?”

  “You want to learn guitar?” I said dumbly. “From me?”

  “Well, Rodrigo and I, you know, we have to do a project on The Odyssey for English class? And our teacher said that Homer was this famous poet, except that in ancient Greece, the poets sang their stuff instead of just reciting it? So, Rodrigo and I, we’re thinking that Homer was, like, the equivalent of a rapper back then. So, instead of just doing some boring report, we figured we’d do a hip-hop version of The Odyssey.”

  “And you’re using a guitar?”

  “Well, Rodrigo’s going to beatbox while I do the words, but we tried it out, and we thought maybe it would sound even cooler if I could play an actual, old-fashioned instrument, too. I mean, we could just use a music program on our phones, I guess. But we wanna try and make it sound like maybe, thousands of years ago, when there were no computers or electricity or anything.”

  “Wow,” I said. My kid. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t think there were guitars thousands of years ago back in ancient Greece, either.

  “I mean, I don’t know if you wanna hear any of it, if that would, like, help you figure out what I need to learn?”

  “I would love to hear it, sweetie. Let me try to get a little more comfortable here.” I didn’t want to move and lose the signal, plus, my legs were still jellied. I hadn’t put on any underwear beneath my yoga pants, and the cold from the metal steps was burning through the fabric.

  Suddenly, Austin got sheepish. “I mean, it’s, like, still a work in progress.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve written songs before myself. I know how it goes. No judgment.”

  “Okay.” On the tiny screen of my phone, I saw him shrug his shoulders and roll his head like a prize fighter preparing to go into the ring, donning an attitude like a leather coat. Slicing a beat in the air with the sides of his hands, bobbing his head, he bleated: