All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  “Picasso was born there.”

  Ruby wondered if he planned to take her there. “Is it far from Toledo?”

  “No so much. But I want to tell you about his nudes. You say you want to learn about art, so I am teaching you,” he said, pulling one of her feet into his lap and rubbing it. Ruby leaned back into the barstool, lifted her other foot to his lap, too. “Oh.” Javier smiled. “She is greedy.”

  “I missed you.”

  “I miss you también.”

  “Take me to bed.”

  “I can do that.” He smiled. “But you go first. I had an idea.”

  When he came into the bedroom, he was carrying a bowl full of warm water. He’d poured oil into a tumbler, set the tumbler in the bowl, and was using the water to warm the oil. He pulled off the top covers, had Ruby turn onto her belly, and then he straddled her. She heard him pour the oil into his palm, and she felt bliss as it pooled on her back, warm and soothing.

  “Is good, yes?”

  “God,” she moaned.

  “I was talking with you about Picasso. His nudes.”

  Her eyes were shut, her vision closed off. She tried to focus only on his baritone rumble, the warmth he was kneading into her body, and the weight of him holding her down, preventing her from spinning off into some galaxy of loneliness.

  “What I have beened thinking,” Javier continued, now dropping his hands onto her buttocks, spreading more oil. “Was that I take photos of you, your body. When you are like this. For my portfolio.” He slipped his oil-slick fingers into the crack of her ass, pushed two of them further, into her vagina. She clamped down, used her muscles to keep his fingers inside her. He began moving his fingers deeper, then withdrawing them. Ruby moaned.

  “You like this.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you would. Now turned over.”

  She did as he asked, and she opened her eyes to look up at him as he pulled his shirt over his head, undid his jeans and removed them. He wore no underwear, and she could see he was hard, ready.

  “Come be inside me,” she said, but he shook his head and instead poured more oil into his palm. He let the warm oil drip onto her breastbone. She felt the slip and slide of his hands as they rode her breasts.

  “With those photos of you, I capture your physicality.” He pronounced it feeseecality, and the combination of his voice, his touch, made her shiver.

  “Please,” she said. “Please, Javier. Be inside me.”

  “Your body does not lie,” he said. “Your body is no angry with me. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He slid into her at last, slow, controlled, still withholding.

  “Please,” she said again, and in response he thrust deeply, stopped.

  “You will let me take those photos. Yes, mi amor?”

  “Yes.” She sighed, realizing the idea of posing in the nude for him, of hiding nothing from the unflinching eye of his camera, turned her on.

  “Is good,” he said. “You are my Ruby.”

  * * *

  —

  INSPIRED BY GERITOL ads, Ruby pleaded exhaustion and iron-poor blood when she approached Bob Christianson. She told him that if she could cut back on the after-show mixing for a while, she thought she could get her energy back.

  “You’re feeling weak and run-down?” he asked, parroting one of the television commercials.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “At your age?” he asked suspiciously and then added, “And you get enough sleep?”

  “Well, that’s what I want to do. To catch up on things like sleep,” she said, avoiding his gaze by looking at the photo on his wall of Miss Atomic Bomb 1957. The woman wore a skimpy, white-feathered outfit in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

  “Ruby.” He waited for her to face him. She turned and focused on the lines in his broad forehead rather than his eyes. “It’s not this Spaniard, is it?” She shook her head, but he continued. “A lot of boyfriends can’t handle it, seeing their woman onstage, knowing other men watch her.”

  “I just—”

  “I’ll give you a month.” Her boss sighed. “But, Ruby.” He closed his eyes briefly in frustration. “Don’t let this man make your world small. Someone who makes demands—well, he’s just not the right kind of man for a woman like you. Don’t risk your career, all right?”

  She nodded, looking down at the surface of his desk, pretending great interest in the polished wood grain.

  “One month,” he said firmly. “That’s it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him briefly before making a quick exit.

  * * *

  —

  WITHOUT THE LATE nights spent mixing, Ruby was able to get up earlier. She and Javier used the time to do things together, and she felt their union solidifying, their intimacy deepening. She bought a pair of bicycles, and when the wind wasn’t whipping up sandstorms, they rode in Red Rock Canyon, away from the Strip. She brought along her Instamatic camera and tried to capture the beauty of the rocks’ colors against the startlingly blue sky. Ruby sent some of her best snapshots to the Aviator, told him of picnics she and Javier enjoyed on a rocky escarpment, watching a mated pair of red-tailed hawks soaring overhead. She told the Aviator that the raptors made her think of him, how she envied him his flights, his bird’s-eye perspective.

  Ruby found time to draw again, to use some of what she was learning from Javier about the world’s great artists to practice techniques like foreshortening and proportion. When Javier took off on his own to develop film and print his photographs in the darkroom he rented by the hour, Ruby used the time to think. She came to the conclusion that relationships were like the variations in classical music, full of tempo changes, crescendos, and pianissimos. The variety of tempos served a purpose, held the listener’s interest. If everything between her and Javier were smooth, how boring would that be? She determinedly pushed and pulled their union into the exact musical score she wanted to hear.

  Rose waited for Ruby to come offstage and then cornered her in the Dunes’ dressing rooms. “We miss you,” she began. “I miss you. And I need for you to help me understand. You can’t come to my bridal shower because Javier said you couldn’t? He’s telling you where you can and can’t go?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then what?” Rose demanded.

  Ruby took a quick look at the clock on the wall above her mirror.

  “Now you’re going to be late getting home. Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “Rose, I—”

  “You what?”

  “It’s just that he’s sensitive.”

  “You mean he acts like a spoiled child if he doesn’t get his way. He’s controlling, Ruby.”

  Ruby looked around, well aware that some of the lingering showgirls were eavesdropping. “Maybe we can go get a drink? Just one.”

  “I’ll take what I can get,” Rose said.

  Ruby ordered a daiquiri and remembered the first time she’d tasted one, seated at that long-ago bar in the Aladdin. It seemed like decades ago.

  Rose flipped her long blonde hair back over her shoulder and sipped from a glass of chardonnay. She was wearing her usual off-work outfit of tight, low-slung jeans with a silk blouse and gold hoop earrings. “So talk to me.”

  “What is there to say? You all seem to have made up your mind about Javier—a long time ago.”

  “Oh, Ruby.” Rose sighed. “There’s everything in the world to say. First of all, I haven’t seen you—alone—in about a million years. You isolate yourself. You say you can’t go out with us anymore.”

  They all wanted too much from her. Of course she didn’t have as much time for her friends as she used to, not with a boyfriend in her life. They should understand that.

  “And then there’s this,” Rose said, point
ing to a bruise that circled Ruby’s wrist. “What the fuck?”

  Ruby covered the wrist with her other hand, shoved the whole mess into her lap, and looked at the kaleidoscope of colored glass bottles reflected in the mirror behind the bar. It had happened during rough sex. That thin, shaming line between pleasure and pain.

  “Why do you put up with it? With him?”

  “I love him. I need him.”

  “No. No, I won’t accept that,” Rose said firmly.

  “Well, that’s my answer.” Ruby almost cringed at her peevish tone.

  “Tell me what you see in him. And don’t tell me he’s good-looking. There has to be more.”

  “He’s different. Exotic.”

  “So’s his idiot parrot.”

  Ruby couldn’t help but smile. She did hate that parrot, although she’d secretly begun trying to teach Iago to say, “Hellooooooo, Ruby!”

  “So you’ve not completely lost your sense of humor,” Rose said. “That’s one good thing.”

  “Javier helps me—in ways you can’t see, and in ways I can’t explain,” Ruby said, thinking of the unused razor blades in her medicine cabinet. “He gives me comfort and protects me. And Javier needs me. No one’s ever needed me before.”

  “He makes you think he needs you. Oh, God, Ruby, I know you don’t want to hear this, but someone’s gotta say it. He’s using you, plain and simple.”

  Abruptly, Ruby stood and began looking in her purse for her wallet.

  “Don’t,” Rose said, putting a halting hand to Ruby’s forearm.

  “You don’t understand,” Ruby said. “You can’t understand. No one understands what goes on behind closed doors, in relationships. Don’t presume to know.”

  “I’m trying to understand,” Rose said, countering Ruby’s strident tone with a soft, nearly motherly voice. “Help me understand.”

  “He tells me the truth. I tell him the truth. We’re honest—unlike everything else around here. Everyone else around here.” Ruby gestured.

  “The truth? You tell each other the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then tell me this: Where does he go when he disappears for days at a time, when he’s gone off to pout? Do you know?” Rose paused, but not long enough for Ruby to find an answer. “And you. Have you told him the truth? Does he even know your real name?”

  It was like a punch to her gut. Deflated, Ruby sat back down on the barstool. It wasn’t just her past—her childhood and Uncle Miles—that Javier knew nothing about; Javier didn’t even know her real name.

  “Honey, no one is ever really honest at the start of a relationship. We all put on a show, hoping to attract someone. And then we get trapped by that person we’ve pretended to be. We try to be the one who’s never jealous, never petty or smelly, who’s always sunny and cheerful. But sooner or later, the blinders come off, and we’re forced to see the other person—really see them. That’s when you find out whether or not it’s love. Not before then. You can’t really love someone if you don’t even know them.”

  “So, you and Matt are perfectly honest with each other.”

  “Maybe it’ll take our entire lives to really know each other. But we took the time to get to know each other fairly well before we decided to get engaged, to even contemplate a life together.” She patted Ruby’s knee affectionately. “Kiddo, I love that you were brave enough to jump feet first into this thing—literally.” She smiled. “But I’m worried about you. We all are. Any man who tells you to give up your friends—well, that’s a dangerous man. Possession isn’t love. And a man who does this”—Rose pulled Ruby’s wrist onto the top of the bar, put it on display between their two drink glasses—“that’s a man to run fast and far from. Pronto.”

  “I can’t—” Ruby began. “I don’t—”

  “He talks about the truth a lot, that man,” Rose said, slapping a five-dollar bill onto the bar and nodding goodbye to the bartender. “But I don’t think he’s ever met the truth.”

  Rose was wrong, of course. And Javier had been through so much in Spain. He’d lost not only part of his foot, but also his homeland. He was a wild, wounded dog Ruby had managed to coax from a cave. It was entirely reasonable that he be fearful of humans. Over time, with patience, she’d save him, bring him back into the world. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—reveal all of this to Rose. This was their relationship—her and Javier’s. She knew Rose cared—that was obvious—but Rose was also intruding, and Ruby resented that.

  Rose took Ruby’s elbow and led her out of the bar. At the curb, she said, “Look. Women give their all for a man. But have you noticed how men stop short? They save themselves. They have a sense of self-preservation, not self-sacrifice.” Rose sighed. “Ruby please, please come to my bridal shower. I don’t want to have it without you.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Well try hard. Because, Ruby Wilde, I also want for you to be my maid of honor.”

  She gave Ruby a solid, long hug, and Ruby said, “I love you, Rose,” while looking over Rose’s shoulder into the blinding neon glare.

  * * *

  —

  “YOU ARE SAYING is not negot— that word. You are saying that to me?”

  Purposefully, Ruby kept her tone neutral but unyielding. “She’s asked me to be her maid of honor. So yes, it’s nonnegotiable. This afternoon, I am going to her bridal shower.” Ruby had set up her card table and was wrapping a pink silk robe for Rose’s shower gift. She loved feeling the fabric’s graceful slide.

  “Then I won’t be here. When you comed home, I won’t be here,” Javier said, his hands on his hips.

  Determined not to take the bait, Ruby calmly folded a sheet of crisp white tissue paper over the robe. What could possibly be threatening about a bridal shower? Still, she didn’t look up. She wasn’t the least bit certain that she’d be able to withstand the pull of her empathy for him.

  “You are listen to me?” he demanded.

  She reached for the Scotch tape.

  “Maybe you wan that I keep you here? Maybe that is the game you wan play?” She felt more than saw that he’d taken two steps toward her. His shadow fell across the card table.

  Ruby felt her self-assurance wane. “No, I do not want to play games,” she said, hearing—almost as if it were a memory—how small her voice sounded.

  “I can do that,” he promised. “I can keep you here.” And then when she refused to look at him, he smacked the gift box from beneath her hands, sent it flying against the wall. Reflexively, Ruby cringed and hated herself for it. Javier grabbed the top of her shoulder, dug in his fingertips until it felt as though he were trying to lift muscle from bone. She gasped with surprise and pain. Her wild dog had bitten.

  There was a knock at the front door and Vivid called out, “Ruby?”

  “You don answer that.”

  Vivid knocked again and tried the doorknob, which was locked. “Ruby,” she said, and it was obvious that Vivid’s lips were close to the door, emphatic. “I heard you. So open up,” she said. “Or I call the cops.”

  Javier let go of Ruby, and she literally ducked to get away from him. She held a hand to her shoulder, which burned.

  Once Ruby unlocked the door, Vivid reached inside quickly. She aimed a look of disgust at Javier and grabbed Ruby’s hand. “You’re coming with me. Now,” she said, tugging.

  Ruby pretended helplessness in Vivid’s grasp when all she really felt was a blend of shock and relief. She glanced back at Javier but let Vivid pull her out of the apartment as if her friend were a lifeguard, yanking her from turbulent waters. Javier crossed to the door and kicked it closed behind the two women. The sound was sharp, like a rifle’s report.

  She’d angered him, and now he’d leave again. How could things fall apart in a matter of seconds? In a matter of a few sentences? At the same time, how could a woman
who’d survived her family’s swift, complete destruction even ask that question or be the least bit surprised? Life could turn on a dime.

  Vivid’s apartment wasn’t far, but Ruby’s legs were rubbery and weak. Vivid put an arm around Ruby’s waist, held her up, and once inside, she grabbed a bag of frozen peas and draped it over Ruby’s injured shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Ruby said, seated on Vivid’s couch. The radio was playing the the Guess Who’s “American Woman,” and before coming to sit beside Ruby, Vivid turned down the volume.

  “He has to go,” Vivid said. “Honey, he has to go.”

  Ruby shook her head, looked into her lap, and began crying. Why was she crying? It was the surprise of it; that’s all.

  “I’m just saying what you already know.” Vivid lit a cigarette with her beautiful silver lighter. She blew the smoke away from Ruby.

  “Let me have a drag,” Ruby said. “Just one.” She closed her eyes, let the smoke fill her lungs, and then handed the cigarette back. “Fuck me.”

  “You’re already fucked, honey.”

  “He doesn’t mean it.”

  “Come off it, Ruby! He’s a sadistic, manipulative bastard. Don’t pretend otherwise. And don’t expect the rest of us to participate in the lie you tell yourself.”

  “You’re making too much of this,” Ruby said almost wishfully. She collapsed against the back of the couch and pushed the bag of peas back into place. She grimaced. Vivid was wrong, plain and simple. Yes, Javier had scared her. But Javier lashed out with violence because it was what he knew. Changing how he related to the world, helping him to learn trust, would take time. She’d be patient.

  The two women sat quietly. Ruby knew her love for Javier was fat with desperation, a needfulness she’d never before known. She didn’t completely understand it herself, the addictive nature of Javier, so how could she help anyone else to understand? The frozen peas were making her cold, and she shuddered before pulling a finely knitted purple afghan from the back of Vivid’s couch and wrapping it across her bare legs, beneath her cutoff jeans.