by Alison Tyler
She squirmed in the seat, surprised by his words. More than surprised, she was instantly turned on.
‘And then when you met my eyes, I thought I was going to come right there, behind the cash register. You know? There’s something in the way you looked at me that just floored me. I could have punched the keys on the register with my cock, I was so hard.’
Could she have dreamed dialogue like that? She didn’t think so. His words were too raw-sounding to be something she’d created. She felt this constant inner conversation distracting her, her conscience wondering whether this world was real or not. And she wished she could turn down the volume. Then he reached for her hand once more and pressed her palm against the crotch of his jeans, and when Dori cradled the heft there, she was the one to groan.
‘You see?’ he asked, and she nodded and thought nothing had ever felt as real as his cock straining against the front of his jeans.
‘And,’ the boy continued, ‘I felt as if I knew you. But we haven’t met before, have we?’
What an odd conversation to have with her hand on a man’s cock!
Dori shook her head. Shook her head as she bent forward and undid the shiny copper buttons of his fly. He settled back against his seat now, watching her. She was infinitely aware of every sensation. The sound of the cars pulling in and out of the parking lot around them. The sulfur-yellow lamps throughout the lot. The smell of the van, a combination of spicy cinnamon from Big Red gum – she could see the bright red paper wrappers and silver foil remnants scattered around the floor – and cigarette smoke – there were butts spilling out of the ashtray, many of them adorned with a dark scarlet lipstick. She could smell the rubber of the battered black floor mats, see glittering bits of sand and tiny pebbles stuck into the grooves.
And then she saw his cock. Hard and naked and ready for her. She put her fist around the length, and jacked him once, softly, to get a feel for what he liked, before bringing her mouth to the head. His skin was silky, so sweet in her palm.
So real.
Dori closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the taste of his skin. Like summertime. Like memories that had been fading up on the top shelf of her closet. She was blowing a boy in his van and, fuck, she had to be dreaming. A dream. A dream. A dream. She could tell herself that over and over, as the warmth of his flesh met her mouth, as the scent of his body took her over. His black jeans were scratchy against her face. When she used her fingertips to push his black T-shirt up, she saw the muscles on his flat stomach, saw the turquoise tail end of a tattoo disappearing around the side of his waist. What was the full image? A scorpion?
The minute details seemed to take over her mind. As she sucked him, she stared at a tear on the side of the driver’s seat. A ragged rip in the tan fabric where she could see a bit of foam beneath, foam the color of fresh egg yolk.
Who saw details like that in their dreams? Hers were generally hazy. She’d remember snippets. Friends appearing and then disappearing. A rock star she liked showing signs of interest, before fading away. She couldn’t remember ever having a dream this intense, one that felt this true.
The boy grabbed the back of her hair, twining his fingers in the glossy strands, and she heard him sigh, heard him swallow hard. He liked what she was doing to him. That made her even wetter than she had been so far. She turned in the seat to get more comfortable, snaking one hand between her own legs to feel her arousal through her panties. Oh, yes. Very wet.
‘Don’t stop,’ the boy said, his voice shaking. ‘Please don’t stop –’
He didn’t continue the sentence, and she realized that was because he didn’t know her name. But she didn’t care. She continued in her mission, bobbing her head on his shaft, taking more and more in with each thrust.
‘Oh, God,’ he said next. ‘Baby, that is so fucking good.’
She’d always loved it when a man called her ‘baby.’ So maybe this was a dream after all. She was adding in the elements that always turned her on the most. Had she ever had a wet dream before? Had she ever had an X-rated dream that made her come? Because now he was pulling her off him, helping her to sit up once more, slipping her dress up and her panties aside. He ran his fingertips over her pussy, and she sucked in her breath at the sensation. She thought he would go fast, thought he would want to rip her knickers down and drive inside of her, but he didn’t.
He seemed shocked by her Brazilian. She didn’t usually go for such a complete wax job, but she’d been hoping on hooking up with Rowan, and Violet had egged her on to go for a clean sweep. Luke hadn’t been surprised in the least to find her totally bare. So many women followed this trend that the look had become standard. But this boy was mesmerized. Had he never seen a girl completely shaved? Had there been Brazilians in the 80s?
No, she thought not. When had she first heard of this type of thorough wax job? Her brow furrowed for a moment, while she tried to remember, and then, once more, she had to stop thinking as lust took over.
‘Do you have something?’ the boy asked, ‘I don’t. I mean, I wasn’t expecting …’ and she blinked for a moment, not understanding the query, then reached into the side of her purse. Thanks to Violet, she did. She handed over the foil packet, watched him stare at the square for a moment before expertly tearing it open. ‘Never seen one like this,’ he said, and she realized Violet had given her one of those new-fangled condoms, a type created for a woman’s pleasure, a style that didn’t even exist in the 80s, as if ‘women’s pleasure’ hadn’t been an important part of condom sales.
‘They’re new,’ she said immediately, ‘only available in New York, I think.’
The boy slid the condom on easily while she kicked off her panties, then positioned her just right, so that she was astride him, and she gripped onto the headrest behind him, and worked her body up and down. She knew that people would be able to see them through the windows, but she didn’t care. That fact made the act even more exciting.
She’d be the one on display now, she thought. Not Gael and Bette. She was the one in the window. Up and down she went, riding on him, doing all the work. He sat back and gazed at her, then ran one hand along the hollow of her throat, and she bit down on her bottom lip and groaned.
Fuck, it felt good. So good. Too good.
When she came, she knew – she knew for a fact – that this was no dream.
Afterwards, he took her for a bite. The only place close by that was still open was McDonalds, but Dori didn’t mind. She was ravenous, couldn’t remember when she’d actually last eaten. Could it possibly have been the night before? How had she managed to make it through the day without food? The boy looked admiringly at her when she ordered – Big Mac, fries, vanilla shake. There were no salads on the menu. No yogurt and granola parfaits. No bottled water. That was a shock. When she asked for water, the girl behind the counter handed her over a paper cup filled from the tap. Still, she didn’t have a ladylike appetite, and her impromptu dining partner seemed to appreciate this fact.
But if he were surprised by her order, she was the one who was surprised when they got their food. The portions were so much smaller than those in her time. There was no option to Super-Size, no 32-ounce anything. Still the burgers were heavenly, the ‘special sauce’ tasting more gourmet than anything she could imagine eating in New York. She and the boy ate them in near silence, both famished, sharing sips of a vanilla milkshake that was the most delicious taste Dori could imagine.
Was it odd that they weren’t talking? Dori didn’t know. She still felt lightheaded, but not uncomfortable. Had she ever experienced a one-night stand like this? Not since college. Maybe this is what her life was lacking. Excitement. Outrageousness. Adventure.
She kissed his cheek when he dropped her at the car, calling him Ozzy with a wink, wondering if she’d ever see him again.
Back home, Dori walked slowly into her old bedroom. She took off her dress, then slid into the oversized T-shirt she found under the pillow. Feeling like a sleepwalker, she put one of he
r new albums on the turntable, balanced the 17 cents of change on the arm required to keep the needle from skipping, then curled up in her own bed for the first time in twenty years. She stared up at the multitude of tiny cracks in her ceiling, lines she’d always envisioned created maps of imaginary lands, and wondered if she’d fallen through one of those cracks.
How had she gotten here? How had this happened?
Finally, she tucked her hands under her head and breathed in deep.
It could have been worse, she decided, in those last misty moments right before sleep took her over. She could have woken up in the 70s.
Chapter Ten
The click-click of the needle skipping over the paper label was the first sound she heard. Dori lay in bed, eyes closed, the noise startlingly familiar, even though she hadn’t heard that sound for two decades. What record had she put on the turntable before shutting her eyes? Dark Side of the Moon. Her musical tastes had definitely impressed Ozzy the night before. What had he said over their late-night snack? Thank fuck she hadn’t been buying a Tiffany album or one by The Bangles.
Did she look really like that sort of girl?
Sitting up in bed, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror over her dresser.
No, she didn’t look like a girl at all. She was wearing her favorite nightgown – a knee-length T-shirt that had once belonged to her older brother – and a concert T-shirt from The Police that she would kill to have today. But something wasn’t right. She was a thirty-eight-year-old woman in a teenager’s bed. Sighing, she knew she had to do something.
How long was she going to be here?
She had no idea. The house was hers for a month. That would give her the time to to figure out what she ought to do. She went downstairs to fill up the Mr Coffee as she took stock of her situation. What if she were stuck for eternity? While she waited for the coffee to brew, she considered her options.
Go back to sleep and hope she woke up in 2008?
She’d already tried that. Sleep didn’t seem to affect the hallucination in the slightest. In fact, this was unlike any dream she’d ever had. She went into the bathroom, and when she put her hand out, she could touch the cold surface of the porcelain sink. As she drank her first cup of coffee, she could sit and watch the second hand tick on the kitchen clock. There was none of that wavy quality she often had in dreams. No switching landscapes, moving with ease from one scene to another. No ability to fly, to speak a foreign language, to be naked one moment and clothed the next.
This was like real life.
But twenty years in her past.
So what should she do? She shook the question away, replacing it with another one: what would Violet do?
That was easier to answer. Violet would be proactive. Yes, she felt more upbeat at the thought. Doing something – anything – that sounded good. Then she looked down at her T-shirt. First she had to find something to wear.
Coffee cup in hand, she went upstairs to her mother’s closet and looked inside. Nothing there for her. She and her mother might have been about the same size, but they had never shared the same tastes. Her mother was in advertising. In 2008, she dressed in the top designers, but in the 1980s, well, Dori had to give her mother credit – she’d worn what every high-powered working woman wore: assorted blazers fitted with the most enormous shoulder pads created by mankind.
Dori ran her fingers over the stuffed shoulders on each of the suit jackets. What was the point? To make women resemble linebackers? The square shoulders stood at attention even on the hangers. She delved further into the closet, looking in bewilderment at the shirts, each one with a floppy bow to tie at the neck. How had her mom dressed in these clothes without laughing herself silly? Ah, well, maybe that’s what the marijuana was for. Maybe her mom had needed to be stoned in order to get dressed every day.
When she stared down at the shoes, a smile played over her lips, recalling that, yes, her mother was one of the many women who would wear sneakers over her nylons for the stroll to work, only changing into her ugly high heels when she’d arrived at the office. How utterly appalling. There was no way she would do that, no way she could make the clothes here suit her needs.
So what should she wear instead?
Prior to the reunion, she and Violet had cruised the internet for hours looking at 80s clothes – now considered ‘retro’ – when deciding what they wanted to wear. She remembered the acid-washed denim, the smell of bleach in the air when she and Vi had tried to dye their own pants to be cool. Hadn’t worked out that well, if she remembered correctly. They’d ended up with odd splotches of white against the dark background. Not the same as acid-washed at all. But why had they wanted the look in the first place? As far as she could recall, it was a horrific fad.
As were legwarmers.
And parachute pants.
And hair teased so high it added four or five inches to a girl’s height. How odd was that? Now, Dori added height with heels. In the 80s, girls had added height with hair.
She took one more look at her mother’s clothes before shutting the closet door. Although she knew it was the logical next step, she didn’t want to go into her own closet. It felt too strange to be in her own bedroom, like visiting a museum. She was scared to touch things, to move things.
Finally, she returned to her suitcase and looked through the clothes, pulling out the 80s outfit she’d packed for the costume night. She slid into the outfit she’d brought for the event she and Violet had skipped – the slouchy purple suede boots, the striped purple and white miniskirt, the two shirts to layer – and then looked at herself in the mirror.
She eyed her reflection. Would the women at The Beauty Box recognize her? She didn’t think so. She had worn glasses all through high school, after all. And her hair was silver-streaked now. Besides, she had twenty years on her former self. She might look similar, but in no way had time stood still.
One last look. She thought that while she might not blend with the dress-for-success crowd, she most definitely looked the part of the girls at The Beauty Box. Remembering Gael’s words, she headed back out the door, key in her pocket, and started to walk downtown.
Could she pull it off?
Yes, she thought, she could.
Rowan arrived at Dori’s house moments after she’d left. He knocked on the front door for several minutes, but got no response. As he was walking down the path, a neighbor who was out watering his roses asked if Rowan were looking for the Martins.
Rowan nodded.
‘They’re away for the month,’ the neighbor told him. ‘Nobody’s here.’
How would she do it? Present herself at the counter and say that her cousin had told her they were looking for help. She wasn’t sure she’d be in town long, but she’d be happy to work on a freelance basis. That sounded believable to her. What about an employee application? She couldn’t use the same Social Security number as the one she had in real life, could she?
Bette solved the problem for her, delighted that an answer to her unpublished Want Ad had simply walked in off the street. ‘I’ll pay you in cash,’ she said. ‘Is that all right? Then I don’t have to hassle with the government.’
They got on smashingly from the start. Dori remembered how cool Bette was. She’d always been in awe of her boss. Now that Dori was interacting with her as one grown-up to another, Bette was a peer rather than an idol. And Bette was impressed with the names of the musicians and models Dori had worked on. Some celebrities had staying power. And she had done up several movie stars for photospreads in magazines like Rolling Stone and Vogue.
‘This is going to seem pretty small potatoes for someone like you,’ Bette said, looking around the tiny beauty shop with the two-station salon in the back.
‘I like to keep myself busy,’ Dori replied. ‘It’s a relief to be away from New York for a little while, but I’m lousy at relaxing. I don’t want to rattle around in that house for four weeks all by myself.’
‘I don’t imagine you’l
l be by yourself for long …’
As Bette said the words, she looked meaningfully to the left. Dori turned as well, and spied the delivery boy – one with long emerald-streaked dark hair, which he wore pulled back in a ponytail. One with a silver skull ring on the middle finger of his left hand. One she’d fucked the night before.
Oh, God, it was Ozzy.
He was dressed all in black, and had a tight braided leather collar around his neck, and he stood facing the rear of the store, scanning a clipboard balanced on top of a cardboard box. He hadn’t seen her yet.
Bette lowered her voice. ‘Van’s delicious, you know. If you like them young. Of course, he’s not mature yet. Not fully ripe. You could have him for a snack and still be hungry for dinner later.’
Van. That was his name.
Oh, Jesus. Dori squeezed her eyes shut for a second. This was too weird. Had her boss slept with him? And what was Van doing here, anyway? She understood now why he had seemed so familiar the night before. But had they ever worked at The Beauty Box at the same time? She’d quit before going to London, had he started after she’d left?
Dori tried to remember the gossip from her youth. But her time working at the beauty supply was so long in the past. Her brain had replaced those tawdry tales with other, more modern memories. She watched as Van headed out the rear door with his dolly, and then she looked back at Bette, who was talking to her again.
‘So when can you start?’
‘Right now,’ Dori said. Where else did she have to go? She remembered that the salon had gone through make-up artists the way the band Spinal Tap went through drummers. Nobody ever stayed for long.
‘Why don’t you warm up on me? I’m going to a party in the city tonight. I’m good with make-up, of course, but you know, it’s always such a treat to have someone do you.’ She grinned at Dori. ‘Pun intended.’
Dori felt herself smiling back. She remembered this life, remembered this world. There were framed pictures displayed around the make-up station, photos of Cyndi Lauper, Grace Jones, and Debbie Harry. It had been so long since Dori had done 80s make-up, she felt grateful for the glamour shots to look at for reference, although, like driving, this came naturally to her. Dori had always been the one to do her friends’ make-up before parties or dates. She had spent hours perfecting the rock ’n’ roll look of the goddesses her friends wanted to emulate, like Joan Jett and Madonna.
