We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  He raises his arms into a godlike V as he takes in the room. And the boys will play! He laughs. And the boys will fuckin’ play! The guys on the couch cheer, a couple of them manage to free up a hand long enough to raise their glasses.

  Eli’s up off the couch, chest-bumping Eric.

  Little brother, Eric says. Little brother’s friend. He’s right in front of me, grabbing my face, giving my head a rattle. Nice fuckin’ shirt. He’s behind the bar. You being nice to these boys, Hannah?

  Very nice, she says. And this one here—she reaches out and strokes my arm—he’s being very nice to me.

  That one there? He’s a nice kid. Right? Right, Finn? You’re a nice kid. That’s what Jess says, anyway. He winks at me. My heart jumps, organs slamming together on the far side of my skin. My stump bangs into the counter, fumbling for something to hold on to, bump, bump, fuck, too late, the blonde’s eyes widen before I get it back below the bar.

  Eric laughs. Too bad nice guys finish last, eh, Finn? His arm slung over Sweden’s shoulder, his completely okay hand hovering over her perfect black leather tit. Have a shot with me, Finn, he says. Eli. Hannah. Have a shot.

  There’s a weird smile stuck to my face as I concentrate on picking up the glass.

  To all the beautiful women, he says. We all love the beautiful girls.

  The tequila—like gasoline all the way down. Eric sloshes up another round. We shoot it, my gut quaking and the room kind of quaking. I try to focus on something. The girl with the black hair’s gone.

  Hey Eric, Eli says, behind me. Show him.

  What?

  You know. Show it to him.

  You think so?

  Yeah, I fuckin’ think so.

  And Eric reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blue velvet box.

  Oh, Hannah squeals. Let’s see it.

  Eric slides the box slowly across the bar, so slowly I have plenty of time to get sober. Completely sober and still. The whole world waiting for this frozen fraction of a second to skip forward. Waiting for the slow bang of my heart and the blue velvet box to collide.

  Open it, Eli says, like I knew he would. Just like I knew he would. It’s the reason he brought me here. So he could watch me open the box.

  It’s not that easy with one hand. I have to pick it up. Flip it around, grip the bottom with my palm, work my nail under the lid, while they all watch. I use my thumb as a lever, give a push, and the lid snaps up.

  Oh my god! Sweden leans in for a better view. It’s huge!

  Two carats, Eric beams. Got it wholesale in Vegas. My old man set it up. He reaches across the bar, his hand heavy on my shoulder. What do you think, Finn?

  He’s staring at me, smiling and staring. I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me or not. I can’t tell how drunk he is or how high, what he knows and what he doesn’t, all I know for sure is that both of them, Eric and Eli, wanted me to open that box.

  Big, I say because I have to say something.

  Yeah, it’s fuckin’ big. But you know her, right? You know Jess. There’s a weird flicker in his eye, and for a second he looks uncertain. Maybe a little scared.

  Yeah. I know her.

  So what do you think she’ll say?

  Eric’s squeezing my shoulder, Eli’s breath coming in hot from behind. The ring is in my hand. The biggest diamond I have ever seen. That Jess has ever seen. I think about all the stuff she told me in the Caddy, and how maybe what she was doing that day was preparing me for this right now.

  What do you think she’ll say?

  I make myself look up. I make myself smile. I make myself say yes. Yes. And I hand Eric back the box.

  —

  “WE’RE NOT TOUCHING that one,” Michael says, pointing high and right.

  The boy follows the line of his finger to a window on the second floor. Like all the others—there must be twelve at least, plus the sliding doors—the window he’s pointing at is dark and partially open. Its white sheers move with any breeze that finds its way into the house.

  “That’s his daughter’s room,” Michael says. “I want to keep her out of it.”

  “Whatever, man,” the boy says. “Kid yourself if you want to. You’re the one running the show.”

  And Michael has been. First he’d snuck up to the house on foot, alone. When he was sure the place was empty, he pulled into the driveway and parked the Jeep close to the garage. He and the boy had lassoed the Arm with the extension cord and, like a dog on a leash, they’d practically walked it down the paved path at the side of the house and onto the lower deck where it now sits, hopper loaded.

  Next he’d stashed the Jeep in the parking lot at the private school. Plan B—if anyone shows up at the house, Michael and the kid will bail. Abandon the Arm and run or swim back to the car if necessary. Plan A is no one shows up, they blow out the windows. Michael gets the car, the kid collects the gear, they load up the pitching machine and take it back to the shed, leaving nothing behind but broken glass and a shitload of baseballs.

  As Michael reaches for the on-off button, he feels the dark energy that has been coiled inside him for the last five months rise. He turns to share a complicitous smile with the kid, but the boy is no longer beside him; he’s shuffling down the flagstone path toward the water. Michael watches, agog, as the kid drops into one of the two remaining Muskoka chairs that cast perfect shadows onto the ghost-grey dock. In the moonlight, the boy’s high-tops are a dull red shine, the river a silver drift.

  “What are you doing?” Michael hollers. Despite the fact that they’re creeping around on someone else’s private property, there’s no need to lower their voices. Music throbs across the river, louder here than it was at the ball diamond. “Hey, Dirk! Come on. This is the fun part.” But the boy flops back into the chair. “What the fuck?” Michael mutters as he trudges down to the dock. “What’s up?”

  “I’m tired,” the kid says. “I’m takin’ five.” His face and arms are sheened with sweat.

  “You hot? You want to jump in quick?”

  The kid just shakes his head.

  From the dock, Michael can see the amber leap of a bonfire on the beach a quarter mile upriver, can smell its woody smoke. A pack of dancing kids and what looks to be a half-dozen giant speakers ring the small crescent of sand. Michael checks his watch: 11:18. If the party is legit, if it’s sanctioned by the city, which given the set-up and the volume of the music—louder than breaking glass—it probably is, it won’t go much past midnight.

  The boy stares up at him blankly. “You got anything to eat?”

  “Christ!” Michael throws his hands into the air and the dock bobs beneath him. “No, I don’t have anything to eat.”

  “I seriously need something to eat. I’m fuckin’ shaky.”

  “Come on. Get up.” He gives the boy’s shoulder a shove and is jolted by the slick heat of his skin.

  “I told you before,” the kid says, “I’m diabetic.”

  Michael gives him a disbelieving look.

  “What? I told you.”

  “I thought you were lying.”

  “Why would I lie about diabetes? It’s not, like, something I go around bragging about.”

  The needle marks on the boy’s thigh. Even after the kid said insulin, Michael had thought heroin, crack, cocaine, which he now realizes was stupid. He stares at the boy, collapsed in the high-backed chair, his stick legs connecting the tops of his fat shoes to the bottoms of his long shorts. “There were probably granola bars in the car. If you’d told me earlier…”

  “I have a stash in the shed. At the diamond.”

  Goddamnit. “Listen, Dirk, we’re all set up. I don’t have time to go back.”

  The kid closes his eyes. His head falls sideways until it’s practically resting on his shoulder.

  “I could check the change room. There used to be a fridge in there.”

  “That would be good,” he says without opening his eyes.

  But when Michael feels under the eave, the key is gone.r />
  “Juice,” the kid calls over the music. “And cookies. Or a couple of crackers with peanut butter.”

  —

  “YOU COMING FOR the show?” A block south of the laundromat, a dashing, dark-skinned young man smiles at Mia from a poster-plastered doorway.

  Mia stops, momentarily disarmed. “I was just…” She points vaguely off down Main Street. She’s seen this guy before; he’s a doorman at the House of Targ, a barcade that advertises an eclectic mix of bands.

  “Everyone’s welcome,” he says. “Everyone’s friendly inside.”

  Mia cocks her head. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” His smile widens, beautiful white teeth, an award-worthy smile. She’d been planning to stomp around the neighbourhood, release some of her hostile energy through brisk movement, maybe go drown herself in the river if the stomping didn’t work out. But the doorman has convincing cheekbones and soulful eyes, skin so beautiful brown it seems possible he was birthed from rich, fertile soil, causing no woman pain.

  Mia motions to her overalls. “I’m not really dressed for the occasion.”

  “You look great. And things are pretty casual at Targ.” He holds out his hand. “Mithoun. Engineering student by day, doorman by night.”

  His hand is warm and dry in hers, although its architecture feels finer and lighter than she imagined. “Mia. I’m…my photography studio’s just over there.”

  “Cool.” He lets go her hand and boldly holds open the door. A flight of stairs leads down into a low-ceiling basement, the bar bright at the back.

  She and Michael have been once before. Last fall, when life still held grace enough to allow for a casual evening of drinking and dancing. It had been an alternative 80s night, lots of Modern English, and Bowie in the mix. They’d been two of the oldest people in the place, but it hadn’t mattered. Like the doorman said, everyone had been friendly.

  “Drinks are half price until eleven.”

  “You’re very insistent. You get a cut of the door?”

  Just the slightest flicker of his eye. “Tonight all proceeds go to the Acorn Women’s Shelter.”

  “Ah.” Mia presses a hand to her throat. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply…”

  “Better hurry,” he says, graciously. “It’s ten to eleven.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mia pays the eight-dollar cover, and instead of stamping her hand, a shaved-headed chick in a studded leather jacket pins a “Smash the Patriarchy” button on her shirt.

  Mia’s gin and tonic comes in a tall glass stacked with ice cubes and two twists of lime. She sips the drink, happy for the moment to be standing alone at the back of a crowded bar. It’s not a cabin in the woods, but there’s alcohol and no one knows her. A middle-aged guy with bushy sideburns and weepy, bloodshot eyes—Mia believes he’s one of the owners—grabs a mic, and in his best Darth Vader voice announces that Koi Spice’s perogies can now be picked up at the bar.

  Pinball machines, lights flashing, bells dinging, line one wall. Facing off on the other side, old-school video consoles, race cars with plastic moulded seats, shooting games with wooden rifles tethered by flimsy chains. A small, low stage bumps out from the wall. An Asian woman sporting a velvet bustier and a tiny black thong hustles across the dance floor. She elbows her way up to the bar—even in heels she’s a head shorter than Mia—picks up a plate, then hustles back across the room, her ass flat and pale and dimpled, a bit like the perogies she’s carrying. Koi Spice, Mia assumes.

  Mia takes another look at the crowd. Mixed in amongst the jeans and T-shirts, the plaid and the beards, are patrons wearing leather chaps, silky capes and tight vinyl dresses spilling off-the-charts cleavage and XL thighs.

  “Kinky Burlesque Show starting in five,” Darth Vader reverbs into the room.

  Mia ends up leaning against a column, twenty feet back from the stage. As the dance floor fills, the spot to her right is claimed by a tall, curvy beauty in a red spandex dress, a pair of plastic devil horns flashing atop her head.

  Mia takes a swig of her G&T and a brightness opens high in her chest, a sweet mélange of alcohol and expectation, or just marvel at how a block away from her studio she got so far from home.

  —

  HE SAID YES! Fuckleberry Finn said yes! He’s gonna marry me! When Eric punches me in the shoulder I can’t believe I actually felt sorry for him a minute ago when he was looking all frail. He slips a crisp twenty into Sweden’s G-string—why don’t you go give my little brother a dance?—and she slides out from behind the bar.

  Hey, Eric says as I turn to follow her. I wanna talk to you. He grabs the bottle of gasoline, hooks a stool with one foot, drags it over, sits right down. Grab a seat, he says. He lines up two glasses and pours us both a shot. I take my time getting a stool. And I’m careful when I set it down. Leave enough space so I’m out of punching distance. Smack, slam, wail.

  Eric pounds his tequila. I don’t touch mine. From the corner of my eye I can see Eli on the couch, Miss Sweden standing over him, her legs spread, her leather-clad pussy at eye level. I keep my arms loose, the empty cuff of my shirt—his shirt—hanging between my knees. I smile. I pretend to be relaxed. I pretend to be fearless. I’m good at it; I’ve been pretending to be fearless for months.

  But honestly? I didn’t think I’d be this scared. I thought I would be madder. Raging inside. Like my father. But now that it’s happening, now that I’m sitting face to face with Eric Kelly, I understand it doesn’t matter how much I love Jess or who started it or whether it’s over or not. The only way Eric’s going to see it, if he knows about it at all, is like this: I’ve been banging his girlfriend, the one he wants to marry.

  So, he says, did he tell you?

  Tell me what, I say carefully.

  That bitch broke up with him.

  What?

  Frankie. The fucking linebacker. Apparently she’s in love with someone else.

  Yeah? Every word careful.

  Yeah, he says. But you know how fucking complicated these things are. He gets into spinning his shot glass on the bar, completely mesmerized, spinning it around like a clunky top, one way and then the other like he’s forgotten I’m even there and the shot glass is the sickest thing in the world.

  Like complicated how? I finally ask, because I want to get this—whatever this is—over with, and I can tell he’s not done with me yet.

  He waits until the glass spins itself out before he turns to me and says, It’s complicated because even though she dumped Eli for this other douche, she tells him, get this, she tells him the guy doesn’t even like her. That she’s pretty sure he likes this other girl. This older girl, he says, staring right at me, but this guy is completely fucking deluded because this older girl’s in love with someone else. And this guy, he’s just a fucking kid, a fucking infant. I know, right? I told you it was complicated.

  My smile is gone, but otherwise, I haven’t moved. And I don’t even blink when Eric pulls the box back out and pops it open. In case I missed it the first time. Rock the size of an ice cube. Even with the crappy lighting it sparks like sun on fresh snow.

  Pretty sweet, eh? He plays with the box, flips it around a bit so the diamond keeps glinting in my eyes. I refuse to lift an arm to block the torpedoes of light.

  Know what it cost me? Eric says. Eighteen K U.S. And that’s wholesale. It would be twice that if you bought it retail up here.

  Wow, I say, letting just a bit of the deluded infant creep into my voice.

  You’re fucking right, wow. Eighteen thousand for a fucking ring? But it’s worth it. Because I know what I want, he says. And Jess knows what she wants.

  I pick up the shot glass—I can move again, it was him saying her name—tip my head back, enjoy the distraction of the burn, a different kind of pain being inflicted. I consider telling Eric how I read this article about this Dutch guy who’s figured out how to make diamonds out of smog—which we have a ton of—and how these fake stones are going to flood the market and make the real ones
completely worthless.

  Eighteen K wholesale? I say, instead.

  You’re fuckin’ right. Eric takes another long look at the ring, snaps the lid closed and stuffs the box back into his pocket. Most of his friends have wandered out. There’s just the bartender grinding on Eli’s lap and this one other fat guy sort of passing out on the couch in the corner. Everything’s a transaction, man. In this world? Give and take, give and take. Business. Marriage. Sex. This club. These girls. What we’re doing here, you and me, it’s a transaction, right?

  I guess so.

  You fuckin’ guess so. He’s sounding pretty hammered now, slurring a bit. Listen to me, he says. I give the club money, I get the room, I get the booze, I get the girls. Then I give it to you—the booze, the girls. Right? And what do I get in return? What do I get from you?

  I don’t know what you—

  Respect! I get respect from you, ’cause I’m the fucking man, right? I’m fucking bringing it. And maybe Jess could do better. Better looking, better family, better fucking manners, smarter, whatever. But she can’t do richer. Not around here. She knows it and I know it. And it doesn’t even matter to me. I don’t even want a fucking pre-nup, the old man’s gonna insist, but I don’t even want one. You know why? Because I love her, he says. You understand that? I fucking love her. You respect that?

  Yeah, I say slowly. I respect that.

  Good, he says. You better. You better respect that, you fucking child, you fucking amputee.

  —

  MICHAEL PUNCHES THE code into the glowing keypad and the garage door glides up. Before it’s even waist high, he crouches down, shuffles inside and hits the button on the wall. The door pauses—a gear clicks inside the ceiling-mounted opener—and slides closed again.

  He knows both cars are gone, he’d chinned himself to the garage window and checked it out already. He ignores the collection of thousand-dollar skis racked along the wall, the threesome of golf bags in the corner. He heads for the interior door, although neither Plan A nor Plan B had any contingency for breaking into the goddamn house for food. But when Michael had gone back to the dock with the news that forget it, he couldn’t get into the shed, the boy had grabbed his hand.