Coercion

by Lux Zakari

  “You’re saying that because you’ve got life all sewn up with a job in your dad’s office after graduation, even with your bullshit liberal arts degree.” Michael crumpled the pamphlet and buried it deep in the pocket of his jacket as he headed toward the nearest cooler of soda. “And you’re stoned.”

  Rooney lifted his shoulders and raised his hands like a human scale. “What can I say? Toking gives me a real passion for learning.”

  “It’s a wonder your professors don’t give you shit.”

  “You know me, man. Give me a few eyedrops and I look as bright eyed as any altar boy.” Rooney pointed to the ceiling corner, where a speaker blasted Helter Skelter. “Hey, you know what I’ve noticed? The Beatles cover practically every aspect of a relationship. You know? Like, I like you, you like me, I’m breaking up with you, you’re breaking up with me, I’m thinking of breaking up with you and so on. It’s the whole spectrum, man. So I figure that’s why everyone loves the Beatles.”

  “Brilliant, Holmes.” Michael shook his head as he pulled a Dr. Pepper from the cooler and let the door fall shut.

  “More scorn, I see. It’s okay, I get it.” Rooney poked at several bags of chips on display, producing crunching sounds from inside the packaging. “I guess I can’t expect everyone to be a great thinker like myself. Besides, you probably don’t want to think about the Beatles and their relationships when your own is so Outer Limits.”

  “I’m not in a relationship. Breeze and I are just...keeping things loose.”

  “Well, whatever you’re doing, it’s a good thing you two worked out that Karl Seegan mess. I couldn’t handle the awkward lunches with you guys anymore.”

  “Yeah, we did it for you.” Michael followed Rooney to a wire rack of candy. “We hated making you so uncomfortable.”

  “No need to be sarcastic.” Rooney stopped skimming the rows of chocolate bars and turned to face Michael. “Look, I like Breeze, but you know I’d back you up if you wanted to see someone else. Don’t you ever want to? What happened to that chick Breeze griped about when she caught you checking her out?”

  “I check out girls every day.”

  “Yeah, I know, but this was a real long time ago, and it only stands out because I remember Breeze wouldn’t shut up about her being an ‘ex-buffalo butt.’”

  Michael rolled his eyes. “Girls have no concept of what fat is.”

  “True. So what was that about?”

  Michael threw up his hands. “Nothing. Just Breeze overreacting. A shock, right?”

  “Yeah, good thing she’s cute and can get away with being a psycho.”

  Michael arched an eyebrow and tried not to laugh. “You think Breeze’s cute?”

  Rooney rolled his eyes, his pale, freckled face turning pink. “Give me a break. You know what I meant by that. Or what I didn’t mean.” His attention turned to a candy’s bright orange packaging. “Reese’s! All right!”

  “God bless the easily distracted.”

  “God bless?” Rooney echoed. “Are you finally a believer now?”

  “Sorry, my dad’s the preacher, not me.”

  “So crazy, man. I can’t believe your peaceful, God-fearing pop wanted to kick you out of the house if you didn’t go to college or get a real job,” Rooney mused. “On top of that, you don’t even have to work now since you gave your dad a sob story about how you need to devote all your time to your studies. Just think! If you weren’t so lazy, you wouldn’t be living the high life right now.”

  “Are you through?”

  “Not quite. Speaking of your dad, I want to see him in action. One Sunday morning we should do some ’shrooms and go to his services. I bet we’ll have all kinds of epiphanies.”

  “I’m having one right now,” Michael said mildly, “and it’s that you’re an idiot.”

  “I guess.” Rooney turned back to the candy. “You know what would make my life about a million times better? If these peanut butter cups were giant, like pies.”

  “Not everything can be perfect.”

  “Thanks, Kettle. By the way, my name’s Pot and you’re black.”

  Michael clapped his friend on the back. “Funny. I’m out of here.”

  “You’re leaving?” Rooney’s eyebrows darted upward in surprise. “I thought we were eating here then hanging out.”

  “No, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Michael set his soda and his money on the counter, and the sullen cafeteria employee wordlessly rang up his order.

  “Tomorrow?” Rooney joined him at the counter, plucking a rope of beef jerky from a container like it was a flower. “But I thought we were heading to that party at the lake tonight.”

  “Fine, maybe I’ll catch you there,” Michael said as the cashier dropped his change in his outstretched hand.

  “No way, it’s an hour drive. I don’t want to go by myself.”

  “Then go someplace else.”

  “Yeah, but where are you going?” Rooney called as Michael grabbed his soda and made his way to the door. “What are these secret plans of yours?” He laughed. “Are you just too embarrassed to say you’re going to go romance Breeze properly so she doesn’t sleep with anyone else?”

  Michael saluted his friend with his middle finger as he pushed open the cafeteria’s glass door and headed to his truck.

  * * * *

  “And what are you up to tonight, beautiful?” Shannon’s giggly voice trickled through the receiver of the turquoise blue telephone resting on one of the living room end tables.

  Valerie cradled the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she talked and completed her nightly routine of two hundred sit-ups. “Not a whole lot,” she confessed, her breathing heavy. “Just me and a good book.”

  “And you wonder why guys aren’t asking you out. It’s because you’d rather snuggle up with a ratty old novel on a Friday night instead of some guy whose mission is to pleasure you endlessly.”

  Valerie’s face flamed as her mind wandered back to that afternoon spent against the Volvo with Michael’s hand between her thighs. She swallowed a tiny whimper at the thought and lost count of her exercises.

  “Valerie, hello!” Shannon’s voice broke through her reverie. “Silence isn’t going to cut it here. You were supposed to say, ‘No, I want a guy, not a stupid book.’”

  “Sorry, I got distracted.”

  “You better not be reading while you’re on the phone with me. I hate it when you do that. Now say you’ll join us tonight. Rick and I are already at the bowling alley. Oh!” Shannon gasped, interrupting herself. “I have a great idea. You should call Daniel Travato and invite him out with us.”

  Valerie lay back on the carpet as her abdominal muscles ached, burned and begged for mercy. “I’m not going to call Daniel and ask him out.”

  “Oh, Val, please. Try to think more progressively. It’s the seventies, and in case you haven’t heard, girls can call boys now.”

  “No, I’m not asking him to go someplace with me at the last minute. That’s rude.”

  “I suppose you’re right. One phone call from you would have the poor guy running off to the bathroom to change his pants.” Shannon snickered. “How impolite of you to be so titillating.”

  “Shannon...”

  “Fine, I guess you’re right. You shouldn’t give someone false hopes.”

  “No.” Valerie’s mind drifted back to Michael. “You really shouldn’t.”

  “You know where we’ll be if you decide to come out.”

  “Right.” Valerie nodded, even though she knew Shannon couldn’t see her. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  She placed the receiver in its cradle and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to fight the frustrated feelings building inside her. She knew exactly why she was sitting home alone on a Friday night, and the reason embarrassed her. Her hope embarrassed her.

  Even though she reminded herself daily that Michael had forgotten all about her, she was desperate to know why. He’d barely spoken to her prior to this year, and suddenly, his finge
rs had been deep inside her. She could still imagine his thumb on her clit.

  She shook her head and slowly sat up, curling her knees to her chin and letting out a watery sigh. Since she’d been old enough to know what sex was, she’d taken precautions to ensure when she finally experienced it, it would be everything she’d hoped. She didn’t go out with boys who didn’t interest her, she read magazine articles on what men looked for in women and she’d devoured the steamiest passages in romance novels. But despite that, she was still alone with a broken heart, her defenses proved useless. Her first sexual encounter was indeed becoming everything she was afraid it would.

  A knock sounded at the front door, and Valerie’s heart leaped as she scrambled to her feet. What if somehow her hopes had materialized and the visitor was Michael Vartanian, full of apologies and good intentions? What if he’d undergone a difficult month plagued with personal problems leading to his silence, and now he was ready to make it up to her? She gave herself a quick once-over in the hall mirror before taking a deep breath and opening the door.

  Daniel Travato stood on the stoop, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Hey!”

  “Hi.” The grin that had been on her face melted into a weak, polite smile as she inwardly chided herself for thinking one night would be different from all the others preceding it.

  Daniel waved a laminated textbook. “Thanks again for lending me this.”

  Valerie accepted the book from him and held it close to her body, the cover cool in her bare arms. “I don’t know why you needed it, being in all those advanced courses.”

  “When you’re tutoring people in college algebra, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about.” Daniel buried his hands in his front pockets. “I’m surprised you’re home tonight.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I just thought you’d be out, doing something fun and exciting on a Friday night. But I’m sure you’ve got something interesting going on in—”

  “Why aren’t you out, painting the town red?” She didn’t need to hear his rambling, assumed interpretation of her evening, full of imagined activities she only wished she was doing.

  “I’m still looking for something fun and exciting to do.” His gaze fixed on her as a blush colored his cheeks.

  Needing the easy comfort of a distraction, Valerie stepped aside and held open the door. “Come on in.”

  * * * *

  “What do you mean, you’re ‘busy’?” Michael hollered as Breeze shrugged his hands off her shoulders. He sank down on her full-size bed and slugged one of its many orange satin pillows. “I planned on spending the whole night with you.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to spend it with someone else.” She unscrewed the cap to a bottle of nail polish.

  “I don’t want to spend it with someone else. I want to spend it with you.”

  “Michael, you forget we’re not exclusive anymore, so you can’t have all these expectations of me. What’d you even want to do, anyway? Obviously not go out. I know you have about twelve cents since quitting your distinguished gas station gig. So that must mean you wanted to fuck me then drink all the beer Lisa and I bought. Am I getting close?”

  Michael gave the pillow another punch. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Breeze sighed as she painted her fingernails cherry red at her vanity table. “Calm down and quit yelling at me. It’s embarrassing for us both. And stop hitting stuff. That’s just stupid.”

  “Doesn’t the fact I’m your boyfriend mean something to you?”

  “Actually, it doesn’t mean anything to me because you aren’t my boyfriend. We’ve gone over this before, remember?”

  Michael remembered all right, but had been hoping she was the one who’d forgotten. He struggled to remain in control, hating he had no claim on her, that it was acceptable for her to sleep him with one day, and the next sidle up to Tom Courpel with bedroom eyes for all the world to see.

  She twisted the cap back on the nail polish. “I’m done being the girl who’s supposed to drop everything I’m doing just because you wander over and wanna screw. Sorry, baby, it doesn’t work like that. Not anymore. I want something more.”

  “You’re not being fair.” Michael trembled, the evening going pear-shaped and fast. “And I don’t see how you can say all this to me, but not hold Karl Seegan and whoever the hell else to the same standards.”

  Breeze turned in her chair to face Michael and crossed one slim leg over the other. “You’re still talking about Karl Seegan? That was a whole month ago.”

  He leaned back on the bed and propped himself up with his hands. “So was the last time we had sex.”

  “You’re so dramatic.” She waved her hands back and forth in an effort to dry the polish. “It was only last weekend.”

  “Yeah? And whose turn is it this weekend?” He reached for his half-empty soda and twisted the cap to the left, then the right, wondering why he perpetually tortured himself by asking questions sure to have ugly answers.

  Breeze turned back to the mirror and rummaged through her cosmetics, careful not to smear her nail color. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Tell me who you’re going out with tonight.” The bottle crumpled in his grip as his panic mounted.

  “The girls.”

  “What’re you gonna be doing?”

  “Girly things you wouldn’t be interested in.” She snapped open a container of blush and quickly applied some of the pink makeup to the apples of her cheeks.

  “Great, I’ll drive.”

  “Michael!” Breeze breathed out an incredulous laugh. “Why are you being so weird?”

  He stood and threw the soda bottle in the trashcan near the vanity. “Because if I thought you were actually going to go out with the girls, I wouldn’t have asked to join you.” He grabbed his coat from the bed. “I’m out of here.”

  “Don’t go away mad,” she called after him, but he had already slammed the door behind him.

  * * * *

  “You have the hang of this yet?” Daniel’s mouth curved into a smile as he sat cross-legged on the living room floor and watched Valerie attempt to fan the playing cards in her hand without dropping them.

  “Yes, a full house beats everything.” Her brow furrowed as she studied her cards.

  “Only technically. It beats everything that’s not a four of a kind, straight flush or royal flush, at least.”

  Valerie shot him an exasperated look. “I couldn’t even shuffle the deck before tonight. Give me some credit.”

  Daniel winked. “You’re right, you’ve grown up a lot in the past hour.”

  Her mother appeared in the doorway. “Your father and I are going to bed,” she said with a warm, knowing smile as she toyed with her gold necklace, sliding the pendant up and down the chain. “You kids play nice.”

  “I can’t make any promises,” Valerie said. “Daniel tends to cheat and take advantage of the weak.”

  “Goodnight, Mrs. Mercer,” Daniel said. “Maybe in the morning, Valerie will have learned to be a better sport.”

  “I won’t hold my breath,” Valerie’s mother joked, closing the living room doors behind her.

  “Trying to get in good with my mom, I see.” Valerie nudged Daniel’s shin with her toe. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she’s sort of seeing my dad right now.”

  Daniel raised his hands in the air. “Hey, it’s not my fault. I can’t help I’m insanely attractive and older women love me. It’s a curse, really.”

  “Why?” Valerie asked with a laugh. “Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  His brow creased as he concentrated on splitting the deck in half. “It’s usually a sign their daughters want nothing to do with me.”

  Valerie’s gaze danced over his face. Pink spots bloomed on his cheeks and could no longer be blamed on too much summer sun. She swallowed a giddy, nervous gulp and gave him another nudge with her foot. “I can’t speak for all those other daughte
rs, but I’m having a decent time.”

  He glanced at her and gave her a cautious smile. “A decent time?”

  She nodded. “That’s right. And I think after you let me win a few rounds, I’ll be having a blast.”

  Daniel let out a loud laugh. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, haven’t you heard? It’s good for morale.” She tapped her finger thoughtfully against her lips. “Actually... What time is it?”

  He looked at his wristwatch. “Almost ten. Why?”

  “Because I know a way to boost my self-esteem while keeping you morally sound.” She took a deep breath, her heart thumping like it always did before something important was about to happen. “Are you any good at bowling?”

  “Bowling? I—”

  A sudden, lazy calypso beat sounded on the door. Valerie and Daniel shot each curious looks, and she pushed herself off the rug and padded barefoot to the front door. Then she peeked through the peephole and felt her heart turn over when she saw Michael Vartanian leaning against the steps’ metal railing.

  She unlocked the door with fumbling fingers and swung it open, giving him what she hoped was a dazzling smile, but he appeared not to notice as he stepped inside and brushed past her. Her grin faltered. “Won’t you come in?”

  He turned around and heaved a sigh. “Sorry. You want me to take about three steps backward so I can go outside for a whole two seconds just so you can invite me in, which you were going to do anyway?”

  She bit her lip. “No. I was just teasing you.”

  “I’m not in the mood for teasing.”

  Valerie followed him as he made his way into the living room and sat on the couch. His knee bounced as he stared blankly at the stone fireplace surrounded with potted houseplants and paid no mind to Daniel Travato, who openly gaped at him with distrust.

  “So...do you guys know each other?” She gestured between her two visitors.

  “Yeah.” Daniel gave Michael a brief, tight nod. “I’ve seen you around before.”

  Michael turned to Daniel and narrowed his eyes, as if simultaneously trying to remember him and figure out why Daniel was there. Finally, he just muttered “Hey” and returned his attention to the fireplace.