Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  The truck had caught fire. That’s what had happened. The boys hadn’t been able to make the show, because not only their ride, but their instruments had gone up in the blaze. She was still lost in memories as she used the razor to give him the sleekest shave.

  Van had continued to play gigs after the fire. He wasn’t the type to just give up. But the destruction of his truck along with the demolition of the instruments had been too much all at once.

  She was done with the shave, had rinsed his legs clean with a washcloth, then patted them dry, when Van said, ‘Your turn, now.’

  ‘My turn for what?’

  ‘Lie down on the mat. I’ll take care of you.’

  She gave him a look. He knew she’d had a Brazilian. He’d admired the sleekness of her wax job from their very first time together in his van. But her wax job had been several weeks before.

  ‘Take care of me, how?’

  ‘You know how, Dori.’

  She continued to stare at him for a moment. Sometimes, he spoke with a type of voice that made him seem so much older than his years. The dominant streak within him always turned Dori on.

  ‘Take off your clothes.’

  Dori was more than ready to obey. She slid off the short black skirt and black silky T-shirt she’d been wearing.

  ‘Bra and panties, too.’

  These were both black, as well, and she took them off and tossed them into the corner.

  ‘Lie down on the tiles and lift your hips.’

  He placed a towel beneath her, and then started to spread the shaving cream over her pussy lips. Van worked quickly, without any apparent fear. He slicked the razor over her skin, then dipped the blade in the sink filled with warm water. He moved her legs wider apart when he needed to, and used his fingers to pinch her lips, maneuvering her exactly how he wanted.

  When he was finished, he brought her into the shower and had her wash away the shaving cream, and then he said, ‘Sit on the edge of the tub and spread your legs.’

  Dori followed the command automatically, and Van bent on his knees in front of her, and he used his tongue to make sure he had performed the job well. She was entirely bare, completely clean. Van tricked his tongue over her, until she had to grip onto his shoulders to keep herself steady. She felt as if she were floating, lost in the pleasure.

  ‘You will come, won’t you?’ he asked, and she realized he was talking about two different things – come on his tongue, right now, and come to his show in several days.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, responding to the dual query, yet still thinking at the same time how she might fix the situation for him.

  Fix his truck.

  Fix his luck.

  ‘Awesome, baby. I knew I could count on you.’

  It was what Bette said the next day when she asked Dori to accompany her into the city. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Bette play-punched her shoulder. ‘You know it. You’re different from the rest of the gang. Can’t you feel that?’

  Was she different? Well, she’d always prided herself on being reliable. But was that what Bette meant? She didn’t think so. Dori really thought that she was so scared of spilling something, of telling the wrong bit of information, that she wound up being quiet. And people took this as a sign that she was listening to them, that she was paying attention to their needs.

  What did Bette need?

  Company.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘See? It’s my fortieth birthday.’

  Dori couldn’t hide her surprise. Bette had always seemed ageless to her. Why hadn’t she known exactly how old her boss was, or how much older Bette was than she herself? Not that she was much older now, but back in 1988 when she was eighteen, Bette had been more than twenty years her senior. That’s why she’d played the role of the Mama Bear so easily where Dori was concerned.

  ‘And I always do something memorable for the big day.’

  ‘You mean like a party?’

  ‘No. There’ll be a party, of course. Van’s band is playing. I thought we’d all go to that together. Drink Long Islands until we fall down. But I mean, something big but private.’

  Except, how private could it be if she had Dori along?

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for twenty-five, I bought a Harley. Took me five years to save up for that thing, and I crashed the Sportster in a week.’ She shot Dori a rueful expression as she showed off the long, jagged scar on her forearm, a scar Dori had seen before, but had never dared to ask about.

  ‘For thirty, I went to Europe, by myself. Back-packing. Amazing. I was too old to stay in the hostels, I guess. All the people I met were kids. But it was worth it. For thirty-five, I …’ She gave Dori a sidelong glance under her lashes. ‘I got totally trashed on coke because I couldn’t believe I was actually this fucking old.’

  Dori just shrugged. She wasn’t going to pass judgment on Bette.

  ‘We were in San Francisco, riding those glass elevators up and down. You know, at that fancy hotel in the city? The one with the spinning restaurant up on the top?’

  Dori nodded. She’d been to the same place for her sixteenth birthday.

  ‘Well, the restaurant wasn’t spinning fast enough for us. You know? You do a full rotation in an hour, but that hour seemed so fucking long. So Gael and I got it into our heads to have our own spin. We got nailed on security cameras, but the hotel dick was an okay sort of guy. He let us walk without calling in the cops.’

  ‘So what’s for today?’ Dori asked, hoping this wasn’t going to be some sort of drug thing. Or sex thing.

  ‘Tattoo.’

  Dori’s eyes widened.

  ‘Really?’

  Bette nodded, a huge grin on her face. She seemed pleased by Dori’s response.

  ‘Of what?’

  Bette reached into her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Slowly, she opened the crisp square, revealing the design to Dori’s total delight.

  ‘Betty Boop,’ the tattoo artist announced happily. ‘Awesome. Who doesn’t love Betty Boop?’

  Bette looked a bit pale, but only Dori would have noticed. She wasn’t shaking or biting her nails or anything. If Dori hadn’t gotten to know her so well over the past few weeks, she wouldn’t have realized Bette was nervous at all. She watched as her boss lowered the left side of her stretchy black top, revealing her smooth, unmarked skin. Dori sat nearby, holding Bette’s right hand for support. Although, clearly Bette had made her mind up about this, and she didn’t seem to be the type of person who would quake at a little bit of pain.

  Watching Bette made Dori wonder whether she could give in to her desires too? She wasn’t dreaming. She knew that now. But would a tattoo prove it for real. Would the pain, the blood, show her that this was her actual life? Not a dream. Not a hallucination. That she wasn’t in a coma. Wasn’t dead. She scanned the designs on the wall, trying to figure out what she would choose.

  Bette seemed to guess instantly what she was thinking.

  ‘Do you have any?’

  Dori shook her head.

  ‘Ever been tempted?’

  Had she? Back in beauty school, she’d known so many cosmetology students who had been inked. The fad had begun in the 80s, with the hair bands and the rock ’n’ roll groupies. She’d admired bits and pieces of skin art without ever being sure she’d want one for herself.

  Her fingertips trailed from one design to another. She could feel Bette watching her, as she finally stood in front of one design, a decision made.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘You’ve come this far,’ Nina said, gazing at Dori’s new tattoo in wonder.

  ‘Yeah,’ Bette agreed. ‘You ought to go the whole way.’

  Dori slid her skirt back into place and shook her head, but her eyes were locked on the bottle in Bette’s hand.

  ‘I’ll do the color. Nina will do the cut. You’ll look fucking amazing.’

  They were offerin
g her a makeover, and Dori felt herself balking at the idea. She was the one who gave other people makeovers. She wasn’t the one who got one.

  ‘For the party,’ Bette insisted. ‘We’ll all go looking entirely different. People won’t know what hit them.’

  Nina had already let her hair down. Literally. Her trademark beehive, a look that she was never without, had been chopped into a pixie style and dyed a shiny cinnamon. She looked more like Columbia now than Magenta. Bette had gone brunette, with little curls around her face, looking quite a lot like her idol, Betty Boop.

  Dori knew it was her turn.

  ‘We’ll fix it if you don’t like the results. I swear.’

  Dori closed her eyes. She tried to imagine how she’d felt the first time she’d chopped off all her hair. The thrill of doing something so totally out of character. The shock on people’s faces when they saw what she’d done. Violet had been right there with her, holding her hand. This time, Bette would be.

  Finally, Dori nodded, and Bette let out her big whoop of a laugh. ‘Wonderful. Nobody will recognize you. I swear!’

  She saw the gleam in Nina’s eyes, an expression she remembered from her youth. Nina was always interested in a challenge.

  ‘You’re ready to get rid of the length?’ she asked, and Bette added, ‘Not just the silver?’

  Dori nodded. As ready as she’d ever be.

  The women chatted around her as they worked, as if she weren’t there. She knew what that felt like, to be completely focused on a client’s face, unable to actually see the person behind the cheekbones, the eyes, the lips. Determined to create a masterpiece using the materials at hand. But once Nina had chopped off her shoulder-length hair and given her a similar cut to the one she sported for graduation, the intensity in the room dropped.

  Now, the trio could relax, with Dori’s long hair scattered on the floor around them. She would not look in the mirror until they were done. She decided that from the start. Not wanting to watch the progress in pieces. Instead, she focused on the pictures on the wall, losing herself in her thoughts until she heard Nina say, ‘It’s so sad about Van,’ and she turned her head abruptly, startled.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Nina admonished her. ‘I almost cut your ear.’

  ‘But what’s sad?’

  Bette shrugged. ‘He’s tough, so it doesn’t seem to bother him.’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘You know he sleeps in the van, right?’

  Dori’s eyes widened. She’d had no idea.

  ‘He doesn’t like to let on. You know how he is.’

  ‘But why?’ Dori asked, shocked. Was this why Van was always available, showing up in the middle of the night, seeming to be so thrilled at the chance to sleep at her house?

  ‘His situation’s rough. His dad left years ago. His mom remarried this year, and he and his stepdad don’t get on. He got kicked out a few months ago. He bounces from friend to friend, but when there’s nobody available, he just kips back there. I’ve told him, my sofa is always open, but he’s not comfortable staying over when I have company.’

  ‘But why doesn’t he get an apartment?’ Dori asked.

  ‘He’s saving up,’ Nina told her. ‘First. Last. Security. But it’s hard to get credit at his age, get people to take you seriously.’

  ‘His age,’ Dori repeated, dumbly.

  ‘You know, Emma. Van just turned eighteen.’

  When Bette swung Dori around to face her reflection, she said, ‘You look shocked.’

  But Dori didn’t even see herself. Her mind was focused on what Bette and Nina had just told her. Pieces of the puzzle, or rather forgotten memories, were suddenly coming back to her. What had happened to Van and his band, what had happened prior to the big event.

  They’d been all ready to head down there, but the night before, his truck had blown up. Faulty wiring. Nobody had known that Van had slept in the truck. He’d gotten out, barely, but the instruments – all packed in for the trip in the morning – had been demolished, and there hadn’t been time to replace them.

  Her mind was whirring too fast. Slept in the truck. Is that why he was so interested in crashing at her house? Why he had taken to hanging out with her? She’d forgotten that part of her history, and she’d never thought to ask to visit his own place, had simply let herself believe he had an apartment somewhere. Roommates. A roof over his head. It had been easy to lose track of other people’s problems, she thought, because she’d been so consumed by her own. But there’d never been a time when Van had complained. When he had said anything about his life. Pulling down two jobs. Trying to find space to rehearse anywhere – in a garage, abandoned warehouse, anywhere.

  The destruction of the truck hadn’t been simply the demolishing of wheels, but the dream of the competition.

  End of the dream in general for Van.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Backstabbing baby makes my heart turn over every time we get in bed.

  Backstabbing baby, who’d you rather be with?

  Who are you fucking in your head?’

  They were good.

  That was the first thought she had. The music was solid and the guys up on the stage had a chemistry Dori could feel. They worked together in synchronicity, keeping in constant motion, delighting their audience with the stage antics Dori remembered from the days of 80s Hair Bands. But although the Back Door Delivery Boys were dressed in shiny spandex, with face paint in the style of Adam Ant, they were more than eye candy. Their talent wasn’t just a façade. They played well for real.

  Why hadn’t Dori remembered this? Because she hadn’t wanted to. The demise of the group had been such a blow to Dameron. The whole thing had been ugly. Sabotage some said. The court dates. The questions of whether the fire was due to faulty wiring or something more sinister.

  Some things were better left in the past. That’s what Chelsea always said.

  But now, now this wasn’t the past. This was Dori’s present. And she watched in awe as Van rocked the stage, his connection with the fans reminding her of Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Sexy to women and sexy to men. All at the same time.

  So he was bi. Was that really a problem for her? Was that thought the one that crept into her consciousness every so often, only to slip away when he kissed her, get pushed down once more when he fucked her?

  Or was the problem that she had twenty years on him? She’d no idea that he was so young. He’d told her himself that he was twenty-four. And she’d told him that she was thirty-one. Well, she’d let him believe that when he’d ventured a guess. Who was the worse liar?

  It didn’t really matter, did it? She loved being with him, lived for the excitement he brought her. Seeing him up on stage, striding in those tight Lycra pants, shirt open to reveal his bare chest, was enough to get her wet. And watching the girls in the crowd lusting after him – that was enough to make her jealous.

  ‘He’s so fucking hot,’ she heard one blonde teenybopper shout to her friend, and that pushed Dori to her limits. She headed out through the crowd to the bar, wanting another drink. That was an important difference to living in the 80s a second time around. Now, she could drink. She could smoke. She could exploit all the vices she wanted without having to sneak around.

  With her Long Island Iced Tea in hand, she headed back to the theater, choosing to sit out the next few songs way up high in the balcony. Not aware at all that while she was watching Van, someone else was watching her.

  Did Dori really like him?

  He stared hard at the rocker for a moment. Rowan wasn’t interested in men, but still he could put himself into the shoes of a woman, and he understood there wasn’t a lot about Van that was unappealing. The boy was handsome, even under all that make-up. But he was only a boy. That was the word that struck. Van was a boy. Rowan was a man. Why on earth would Dori be wasting her time with a kid?

  Because he didn’t seem like a kid on stage.

  That was for sure. He had the type of confidence that all
those pretty-boy Hair Bands had. White Snake and Poison and Mötley Crüe. The boys who wore make-up and skin-tight clothes in leopard patterns. He’d have never thought that Dori would go for something like that. But maybe people changed their desires. Maybe in the past twenty years, Dori had turned into someone else.

  Yet her emails didn’t back that up. When they’d begun corresponding, she’d seemed like the same old Dori he remembered.

  He turned to look at her, sitting up in the top row of the balcony, watching the stage from high above. She even looked like the same old Dori, now that she’d cut her hair so short and dyed it that vibrant blue again. What was going on with her? Midlife crisis?

  No. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She was gorgeous, prettier to him than any of the skimpily-clad teens hugging the stage. But then he wasn’t a girl. He didn’t know how girls felt about getting older, didn’t know anything apart from what he heard about in advertisements, what he saw in magazines.

  He should go up to her. He should tell her everything now, explain the situation, wake her with a kiss – the way every good fairy tale ended.

  But just as he was getting up his nerve, she started down the aisle once more, heading toward the stage, and he saw that Van was beckoning her, that he was reaching down for her hand, that he was lifting her up.

  ‘Oh, fuck, that was awesome.’

  She could still feel the adrenaline coursing through her. ‘It was just like in that video. You know the one with Bruce Springsteen?’ She hoped she had her dates right. She remembered that one coming out when she was a freshman, the one with Courtney Cox being pulled from the crowd – so it would have been four years before. What if she were talking about something that had happened in the future?

  Luckily, Van nodded. ‘You really know your MTV,’ he said, approvingly.