The Age Page 18

  “Come on, before this shit wears off.” He says it with mock command, a smile on his face, but she senses something folded into the corners of his mouth, an impatience that could make him mean. She undresses with her back to him. Her clothes lift away, then drip from her fingertips, her body weightless, blended with the air. The codeine floods her with warmth. She slips between the cover and a pilly flannel sheet, startles at the bristly touch of his skin.

  “Whoa,” he says. His smile spreads as he climbs on top of her. His hipbones pry her legs open, side to side. He pauses to cough into his hand, murmurs an apology. She closes her eyes, tries not to focus on each dry, rubbery prod. Tries to think only of the high, the sparkle in her face, the marshmellowy hump of pillow beneath her neck. She feels grateful to the owners of the room, whoever they are, as the faded scent of their lemon detergent rises from the sheets, brightens the stale cigarette funk of the room. Even the cough syrup’s backwash distracts her. She rolls her tongue in her mouth to call up its bitterness.

  Repetition wears her down, the chafe and drag of skin on skin. With each thrust, his moans loosen, and raw pain makes her think of meat in a butcher shop being thumped by a mallet. His body smell, musky with nerves and unwashed parts, wafts up through gaps in the bedding, clouds her face. The rhythm unhinges her, its regularity an irritation to her muscles, her teeth, her cells. He vibrates and whimpers on top of her. His wetness burns. She winces and rolls away from him, stuffs the sheet between her legs, and presses back the sting. Everything inside her pulses, flayed.

  “Are you okay?” he says.

  She wipes herself with the sheet, afraid to look down at the mess she might be leaving. “I’m gonna get dressed.” Her clothes bind, as if she got into the bed one size and came out another. The elastic of her panties nicks at her thighs, her T-shirt tangles, the legs of her jeans twist.

  “You want a cigarette?”

  She opens the door, relieved to fall into the noise of the party, calmed by the faces, the smoke, the light.

  ZZ Top at full volume, the living room has become a dance floor, guys with beer bottle hands. Feet planted, their shoulders wing to no particular beat. The girls are the show. They wiggle their hips, lips pursed as they shake their hair. Two girls jump on the couch as if it’s a trampoline. Ian’s nowhere in sight. She checks the kitchen, then takes her place alone against the living-room wall. After a few minutes, the guy shuffles in beside her, fedora crushed low on his head. “So, hey, I need to find my friend and get out of here.” His eyes flit from a blank space on the one side of her to a blank space on the other. “There’s this other party.” He shrugs. “I’d invite you, but it’s kind of a private thing.”

  She nods, afraid to look him, to see and possibly remember his face. “I’ll take that cigarette.”

  He feels inside his jacket. His hand comes out empty. “I don’t have that many left. Like I said, I’ve got this other party.”

  “Forget it.” She pushes away from the wall, lurches for the kitchen, the back door, beer and cough syrup in a crawling race up her throat.

  His voice trails behind her. “Aw, come on, don’t be like that.”

  The back steps are empty except for a girl crying into another girl’s shoulder. Gerry gulps the cold air, steals past them to a cement path that leads to a garage and a long stretch of yard. A tire swing dangles from a low tree branch, plastic trucks crouch in the unmown lawn. She staggers to the back. A sickly fence separates grass from alley, torn, splintered pickets, gaps like blackened teeth. Pickets at her head, she lies down, searches for stars. Dark, woolly clouds hide the night, keep the moon from view. Each time she closes her eyes, the earth spins like a turntable. She claws at the grass, pulls up mounds of turf, cold clay soil. The damp ground cools her back as she waits for the change, to feel newly emboldened, empowered, brimming with the cocky nerve that marked experienced girls on TV. The only sensations she can pinpoint are a thick, wet swell between her legs, a rash along her jaw from the scuff of his stubble, and her high dropping off into a pit. If anything, she feels hulled, as if there is less of her.

  She gives it a good twenty minutes, waits through two episodes of Ian calling her name from the back porch, before deciding her experiment is a failure. A nagging, embarrassed heat plays up behind her eyes and she tries to fill herself with dewy air, swallow the ground’s loamy smell to keep from crying.

  ——

  Instead of driving home, Ian takes a meandering zigzag through empty streets, the road washed in tungsten light. They drive with the stereo off, the engine’s stutter a one-way conversation, Ian’s mood grey and pensive. The silence unnerves Gerry, amplifies the clamminess of her clothes, the soreness between her legs. “So. What happened to Lark?”

  “Curfew. I took her home. What happened to you?” Ian’s voice is flat with disapproval.

  “Nothing.” Mistrustful of her own face, she stares out the window as they slow for a light.

  “I heard you were with some guy.”

  “I was outside. By myself.” The car’s idling jostles her stomach. She grips the door, in case she needs to swing it open and puke. “Thanks for ditching me, by the way.”

  “It was a party.”

  “That I didn’t want to go to.”

  “Excuse me for living. I thought you’d have a good time.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” Her face feels stiff and hot. She knows if she says one more word, she will bawl.

  “So, you met someone.”

  Her eyes close to block him out.

  “Hello?”

  She rolls down her window and loses him in the blast of wind.

  He punches the radio, drowns her in a cold wave of heavy metal, then shouts over it: “You’re fucking impossible, you know that?”

  They park at English Bay, walk away from the streetlights toward rows of shadowed logs on the beach. Sand pulls at her sneakers, twists her in a crooked stumble. The bay hulks low in front of her, black without the moon. Freight lights glint in the distance, a sparsely starred sky at her feet.

  Ian settles against an oversized log, pats his pockets. As he strikes a match, a dark shape scurries near their feet. The sound slips out of Gerry, a frightened, girlish squeal. Ian looks down, kicks at the sand. Something thumps as it lands a few feet away.

  “Relax, it’s rats.” Smoke curls from his lips.

  She sits back on the log, lifts her feet, thinks of scuttling claws, and keeps her hands clenched in her lap until Ian offers her the joint. The smoke tastes sweet and green, mixes with the sea air in her mouth. A perfect lift rolls up over her eyes, laps at her brain.

  “So, I guess you’re ready for tomorrow.” He sips the words as he tokes.

  “Yeah.” A day without practice and already the details dull in her mind.

  Ian shrugs. “I’m thinking of not going.”

  She can tell by the forced easiness of his voice, he’s baiting her. The back of her throat prickles with smoke. She holds her breath to keep from coughing. “So don’t. Andri and I are the only ones who have to be there.”

  “What would we lose if we didn’t go through with it?”

  “We already put Clem in an old folks’ home.”

  “He should have been there all along.”

  She raises her palms to her eyes, tries to scrub away the annoyance, worries her high will spoil, sink her into a dark place she can’t get out of. “Why do you do that? Why do you have to pretend you’re better than everyone else? God, you’re such an asshole.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m just saying, if you’re not up for it, if you don’t think you can handle it, you don’t have to show up.”

  “It’s like you think you’re smart or something. And you’re totally not. You’re like the dumbest person I know.” She watches the words hit, small detonations beneath the surface of his skin. He looks away, stares at the lit windows of apartment buildings near the park. The breeze off the water buffs cold against her scalp. She squints into the wind, surprised by h
er own meanness. Up on the road, a raccoon lumbers, humped over in a slow, rocking gait. “Look.” She points to draw Ian back.

  He ignores her, blows a thick stream of smoke. “Your mom’s all alone.” His voice is quiet. “Maybe this isn’t the right time. Maybe you should just focus on school. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some things, you do them, even for the right reasons, and other people get hurt, people who are already suffering enough. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  The raccoon struggles at the curb, edges along until it finds a way to climb up. She pictures her mother as an old woman, stooped back, hands like shaking leaves.

  “I wish I’d never taken you to Megan’s.”

  His guilt repeats inside her. “You didn’t make me do anything.” She shivers with fatigue, rubs at her arms. “It’s what I want.”

  “You’re too young to know what you want.” His condescension ignites a thin, quick arc of anger. But the night has left her drained, and it would take too many words to catalogue the ways he doesn’t understand her. She drags her heel in the sand, watches the raccoon’s silver eyes blink as it hides under a bush.

  “Anyway.” He squishes the roach in his fingers. “Nothing’s carved in stone.”

  She picks up a pebble, throws it hard toward the water. It hits the sand. “What would you do, if you were me?”

  “Kill myself.” The joke pricks, a well-aimed dart. He knocks against her to show he’s teasing. She forces a giggle, pushes back against his weight. For a second, he stares at her face, his eyes worried, then turns his gaze back to the water, drapes his arm over her shoulder. “What would I do?” The inside of his jacket is warm. She lets herself rest against him. “I’d stay home tomorrow. I’d try harder at school. I’d go to university, and fall in love, and have tons of kids and teach them how to do great stuff. I’d stop listening to that crappy new wave music. I’d live a hundred years, maybe more. I’d–” He stops himself. From across the water, the long moan of a ship’s horn fills the silence.

  “What?” she asks.

  He squeezes her, whispers, “Gerry Mouse.” Her body rises and falls with his breath. When he finally lets go, she stands, feels the night slip between them as she steps away. She searches for another rock on the sand, hurls it with all her strength, counts the seconds of its freefall before it hits water.

  It’s only after Ian’s car rumbles away, turns into the alley behind his house, that she notices Randy’s truck parked across the street, Randy hunched in the cab. His head bobs an uneven rhythm. She hopscotches her way over, jumps up on his running board, drops her elbows over the open window. “Kinda psycho sitting out here, no?”

  “I see you’re still mixing with the riffraff.”

  “Don’t be jealous, he’s not my boyfriend.”

  Randy snickers. An open case of beer takes up the passenger side of the bench seat, crushed empties pile on the floor. Even without the evidence, the grainy reek of booze rises off him.

  “Throw in a dead dog and you’ll have a country song.”

  Randy points to her house. “Run on home or I’ll rat you out to the warden.”

  “You must be drunk if you think I’ll be the one in trouble.”

  He smiles a closed-mouth smile. His lips disappear into his beard, then reappear as he nods. Alcohol has softened him, brought a youthful sadness to his face. The gather of curls near his neck, his sunken chest, creases pinched around his eyes, his weakness pulls at her. She makes her move slowly, bends into the cab to press her mouth to his. Her lips open against the prickle of his beard, her tongue flicks and pokes as she guesses it should. Randy sits rigid, motionless. She stops, leans back, tries to read his expression, but he stares straight ahead, an unblinking trance.

  “I’m drunk,” he says finally.

  She grabs the doorframe and stretches her body. “I don’t mind.”

  He shakes his head.

  This time she reaches in as she kisses him, strokes his neck, his shirt. His lips remains a stubborn lock, a tight, impenetrable nub. She releases him and sighs.

  “You should go.”

  “I have experience, if that makes any difference.”

  His face scrunches in pain. “I don’t even want to know what that means.”

  “It’s no big deal.” She rests her elbow on the window edge.

  “It’s illegal.”

  “So is drinking and driving.”

  “I didn’t start drinking until I got here.”

  “Come on. Seriously. Just, you know, be a man and do it already.”

  “Fuck you.”

  She leans in again, grazes her mouth over his, and waits for a response. Nothing. Her hands cup his face as she tries soft brushes and pecks. His breath buffets her skin, a long, dis-interested exhale that whistles through his nose. She crushes her mouth hard on his, tries to hurt him, bruise him with her teeth. His lips open suddenly, and his tongue is in her mouth, hot and thick. She sucks on it, and it grows, forces her mouth wider. He grips the back of her head. His fingers squeeze her scalp, a pain that startles, then warms her. Runny heat melts from her head to her neck, spreads through her stomach. She holds his shirt in a fist, her tongue wrestles with his. His moan in her mouth hums through her chin. The feeling in her body reminds her of a corkscrew her mother uses, a slow spiral to drill down into the tight bottle, thin, metal arms that fly helplessly up. A low ache urges her to clench hidden muscles as her hips press hard against the metal door handle. A fizzy shock snaps between her legs, bubbles a gasp in her throat.

  Randy yanks himself away, sags over the case of beer, his face red, his mouth a cavern. “I didn’t mean to do that.” He shakes his head. “I’m too drunk.” He covers his face with his hands.

  She rolls her tongue, mines the sweet smoky taste of him. When he starts to shudder, she guesses it’s over. “Don’t spaz. It was like, ten seconds. You won’t even remember tomorrow.”

  He nods, but she can tell he isn’t listening. She considers crawling into the cab to sit beside him but decides that would only scare him more. “I’m not going to tell anyone. You don’t have to worry.”

  He raises his head. Tears cling to the fur of his beard. “One second she was fine, the next thing we’re breaking up.”

  “She gets crazy about these things. She doesn’t think straight.”

  “I don’t even know why she dumped me. Maybe sometimes I’m an asshole. Maybe. But not with her. I mean, why bother being the good guy?”

  “She dumps everyone. It’s not personal.”

  He wipes his face with his palms. With each swipe, the familiar, stoic Randy rises to the surface. “That’s the stupidest fucking excuse I’ve ever heard.” His voice settles back, hardened and sour.

  “You don’t know what’s she’s been through.”

  “Yeah, well, I should have just treated her like every other asshole.”

  His self-pity grates on her. “She can’t help how she is. No one can.”

  “Who are you, Dr. Joyce-fucking-Brothers?”

  “Just cut her some slack, okay? She’s got a lot to deal with.”

  He snorts. “She’s got you. That’s a nightmare. I should blame this whole thing on you.”

  She likes his sarcasm best, the blade of his humour cutting her with small, delicious nicks. “It’s not my fault you show up in those filthy work clothes.”

  “Fine, I’m no Prince-fucking-Charming.”

  “Would it kill you to take a shower?”

  “Enough already.” Randy groans and massages his temples as if she’s woken him from a bad sleep. His grogginess makes her yawn, the night heavy on her eyes. Still, she wants to ask him about sex, whether it makes a man feel the same way, wishing he could climb out of his body and throw it in the laundry. Randy’s jaw hangs slack. The beginnings of a snore gurgle up from his throat.

  She tips back her head and swings in an arc. “So.” She says it loud enough to startle him awake. “I think a hundred bucks should keep me quiet.”

  He rubs
his face and straightens himself in the seat, lets out a long, tired sigh. “Go fuck yourself.”

  She can’t help smiling. “Fifty?”

  He digs into his back pocket for his wallet and pulls out a single bill. “Here’s ten. Get lost.”

  She leans into the cab and snatches the bill from his fingers, her cheeks warm with a grin.

  Lolled back on the headrest, he turns to look at her, his face sunken, fatigued. “Gerry,” her name heavy in his mouth, as if she’s not a person but a decision.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t ever, ever do this shit for money.”

  She sticks her tongue out as she backs away from the truck.

  “I’m serious.”

  She opens her hand in a slow, low wave.

  “You’re not that kind of girl, Gerry.”

  His certainty cushions her against the empty dark.

  In her room, she rolls a joint, plays side two of Ocean Rain, volume down, music a whisper over the turntable’s whir. She sits in her window, watches Randy’s truck until it pulls away, creeps down the block, headlights off. On her bed, she stretches to feel the blood-rush in her tired limbs. She knows she should focus on tomorrow, get everything clear in her head. Instead, she thinks back to the phone call to her father, the amorphous sound of him. She had expected to feel more, the magnet of shared biology drawing them together. To hear in his clogged, choked tones, guilt rising in his throat. She tries to decide if he even sounded like a man who would rush to get on an airplane.

  Time pass in fits and jerks, her eyes open and close, a thin tap of drums, the needle scrape at the record’s end. She wakes to the sound of the TV downstairs and stumbles to her bedroom door. When she opens it, the unlit house is silent.

  She climbs back onto her bed, feels the air around her chill to an icy cocoon.

  FOR MONTHS DAN DOESN’T SEND HIM on another expedition. At first the boy worries one of the men reported him timid or lazy. Then he notices how Dan dotes on the girl, assigns other women to her chores, urges her to rest. The exemption fills the boy with guilt, though none of the others seem to mind. The girl’s swollen belly and wide gait command quiet reverence. Eager to share her happiness, she guides hands across her stretched skin. Even the most reticent, the most disapproving, line up for a turn.