by Chuck Wendig
She’s naked.
That’s new.
Someone moans next to her.
Another woman.
Also naked.
Well.
The sheets bunch up over the woman’s hip and leg, showing off a tattoo that starts at the ankle and ends at the curve of the woman’s hip and her surprisingly milk-white ass-cheek.
“You awake?” the woman moans from beneath the pillow above her head.
Miriam mmms in response. And she thinks to add, And I’m still drunk, because when she moves her head, it feels like her brain takes a half second to catch up. Same with her eyeballs – she points them places and her comprehension of what’s in front of her lags behind like a tired dog.
The woman’s hand slides across the sheets like a searching snake and her fingernails – long and green, green like wet fern – dance up Miriam’s bony hip and trace languid circles there.
A shiver runs across her skin.
All around, the remnants of a night forgotten: an empty rum bottle, an ashtray so full of cigarettes it looks like a cancerous hedgehog, a bottle of Astroglide, a small red dildo. (Here she hears her own voice saying red rocket, red rocket, then laughing.)
An odor in the air. The heady scent of expended lube. The pickled scent of sweat. The sweet-sour tang of worked flesh and sex.
Miriam blinks.
It’s been a while.
She got laid and can’t even remember it.
Well, shit.
But then the woman turns over – a spiky mess of blond hair, a streak of red lipstick smeared across cherub cheeks, a bared shoulder with ink of a Kraken reaching up and pulling a boat into the foam-capped waves – and suddenly most of it comes back to Miriam in stuttering fits and shuddering starts–
NINETEEN
RUM, SODOMY AND THE LASH
Driving south-southwest. Down the curved crust of damp bread that is the Lower Keys, through the mangroves, through the dark, watched by black long-necked birds on tall power lines.
Into Key West. Around its edge. Into its heart.
Fast forward: mile zero. End of the line. Money in her pocket, the rest split: some hidden under the seats in the car, some hidden where the spare tire would go in the trunk. Then it’s time to park the Fiero – not drunk yet, no sir, no ma’am, but that’s on the menu. Key West splays before her, limbs out, mouth open, madness everywhere.
Here: an old man dressed like a pirate, foam parrot on his shoulder, eyes caked with too much mascara and eyeliner. There: a pair of cougars on the prowl, no bras, big tits swinging like soft fruits dangling from a bowed branch, skin like sun-baked deer-hide rugs, the two coming up on a lanky barely-legal dude with buck teeth and a lot of gums and a whole lot of drunken slack in his rope and a high likelihood of getting double-teamed by this pair of hungry velociraptors. Across the street: a young guy plays ukulele for money and a pit bull sits next to him with sunglasses strapped to his doggy head. Just ahead: a college-age girl puking in someone’s top hat. Welcome to Key West, bitches.
Fast forward: she marches through Mallory Square. Men belch fire and a woman juggles and people sell jams and jewelry and other junk from blankets on the ground. Ahead Miriam sees a woman under a fabric sign that says PSYCHIC READINGS I WILL TELL YOU YOUR FUTURE and Miriam walks by a too-tan woman sitting there with her sun-whitened hair underneath a gypsy headwrap and Miriam sticks out her tongue and thrusts up both middle fingers like a pair of fuck you antennae–
Fast forward: Miriam finds a rum bar. That’s what it says on the sign and that’s all they offer and that’s fine by her. Two hundred thirty different rums, they say. From fermented dogshit to artisanal spirits tempered in barrels made from extinct trees and dodo bones. She goes to the bar and the guy behind it is an old salt with long ears and a bent nose and a Hawaiian shirt so colorful it looks like a clown exploded on him and he asks her what she wants and she shrugs and barks, “Rum.” But he tells her he knows that already, what kind of rum? And in what? Daiquiri? Mojito? Hurricane? Painkiller? She thinks painkiller, I need a painkiller stat, but then a voice, a female voice, pipes up next to her and says, “Give her the root juice, Dan. Give her the mama juana.”
Next thing Miriam knows, Dan is plunking down a shot glass on the bar and pouring something from a jug into it, something brown like Coca-Cola, but turbid, too, like pond water stirred with a stick. She looks at him askance and says, “I’m going to need more than that, my colorful barkeep,” and he takes the shot glass and puts down a pint glass and fills that up. He laughs. The girl next to her laughs, too. She takes a look at her: chubby-cheeked green-eyed chick with blond hair in floppy spikes, some of them tied off with little pink bows, and the girl is laughing with an open mouth like she knows something Miriam doesn’t.
Miriam drinks.
It tastes like – she doesn’t even know what. It’s got the caramel burn of rum, the sweetness of honey, but it’s like licking tree roots, too, like picking up bundles of whatever you find in the woods – thistle and thorn and bark and branch – and distilling it down to whatever the hell is in her glass. It’s like birch beer spat from Satan’s mouth. She loves it.
She drinks more.
Then she and the woman are laughing together, making small talk that moves fast toward dirty jokes: dicks and sheep and hookers and dwarves and pussies. They’re making each other cry, they’re cracking up so hard, and Miriam thinks, I want to know how she dies, which is a fucking goofy-ass thought that hits her out of far left field, and in her increasingly drunken brain she tries to justify it: When I like people, I want to know how and when they’ll leave me. But even that thought seems off somehow because she doesn’t know this woman and has no reason to feel intimate with her–
But then all that doesn’t matter, because a couple of douchebros saunter up behind the two of them, hands reaching out and touching the smalls of their backs, gentle, but insistent; Miriam shifts and the bro presses harder, like he owns her. One’s got his Oakley sunglasses up over his chiseled head and his breath smells like sour tequila. The other is fatter, his head swollen like a cocktail olive and in this light looks about the same color, and he’s showing off crooked white teeth in a lopsided smile–
Douchebros One and Two are trying to buy them drinks, dropping half-slurred come-ons, hitting on the two of them with all the grace and aplomb of orangutans banging their cocks against a telephone pole. And the other woman, the green-eyed spiky-haired blonde, she says something polite, a “No, thanks, we’re good here,” and it’s far nicer than what Miriam would have said, but then the two bros have to go and ruin it for everybody.
The white one with the sunglasses, the one who probably knows all the brands of surfboards and snowboards and flip-flops but can’t remember his own mother’s birthday, says, “Don’t be a bitch. Why you gotta roll your eyes at me?” And then the other one, the fathead with the darker complexion, is saying something about how the two of them are “probably clam-lappers anyway,” and he says it under his breath but Oakley Boy repeats it and laughs like a snorting pig.
Miriam’s had enough. She blurts, “If you don’t go away, I’m going to retroactively abort the both of you.”
And then they’re laughing, mocking her. “I’ll retroactively abort you,” Oakley Boy says, spitting her words back at her in a fake bitchy tone, and Fathead adds, “I don’t even know that that means,” huh-huh-huh heh-heh-heh, and then Miriam spins around and – Grrrrk ptoo! – hawks a loogey right in Oakley Boy’s mouth.
He’s suddenly coughing and spitting and trying to backhand her and knock her off the stool, but she catches his wrist–
He’s old, skin like Bible pages, and he’s in a robe the color of a robin’s belly. He’s puttering around the downstairs and he’s calling someone’s name – “Rachel, Rachel,” – but his mind is a block of Swiss cheese, holes eaten into it by the curse of Alzheimer’s, and then he goes to the cellar steps and calls for Rachel one last time before his brittle ankle twists and he tumbles do
wn the cement steps like a sack of footballs. His head hits the floor face-first. Teeth scatter. He lies there a while, wheezing and whimpering, pissing his pants, and then he remembers Rachel and him were never together and Rachel is dead, and then, just like that, so is he.
–and then Miriam’s other arm darts out, catches his head in the cradle of her hand, and jams Oakley’s skull against Fathead’s skull, and they don’t bonk like coconuts so much as they thud together like two slabs of beef. Fathead trips over his own feet and goes down, bleating like a sheep. Oakley comes at her but she knees her stool forward–
It catches him in the balls. He goes down. Howling.
Fast forward: she and the other woman are bolting down Duval Street past the drunks and pirates and cruise-ship tourists, and the blonde pulls Miriam into an alcove between an art gallery and a Cuban food joint and Miriam starts cursing about those thin-dicked shit-birds, those assholes who think they can saunter into a bar and jam their nickel-sized cocks into whatever coin slot they want just by using a few weak-fuck pick-up lines–
The other woman says, “You have a dirty mouth. I want to taste it.”
Then it’s her mouth on Miriam’s, teeth clicking, skin chafing, two tongues pushing forth and pulling back, a friendly game of tongue-of-war. A death vision slides in here, but it’s like a kite dipping and swaying in a hard wind and Miriam can’t seem to catch it. She chases it like fire chasing smoke but it evades, always out of reach. Then the woman’s hands are on her sides, up and down, fingers past the waistband of Miriam’s jeans. Someone nearby sees them, wolf-whistles, and both women thrust up a pair of middle fingers – synchronized vulgarity, a new Olympic sport.
Fast forward: the woman’s house, ten blocks away, no clothes – two animals clawing at each other, each trying to make a feast of the other, thighs wrapped around thighs, spin around, tits mashed against shoulder blades, fingers down, up, in, pistoning–
Taste and skin and sweat and lube and something that vibrates and – car outside, Cuban music coming in through open curtains, the whine of a mosquito in the well of the ear, the tiny moan of the woman underneath her, the squeak of the bed frame, the whisper of palms outside–
TWENTY
TOUCH AND GO
“Oh,” Miriam says. “Oh.”
The other woman’s hand slides over Miriam’s hip – the bones there so pronounced they might as well be the handlebars of a bicycle – and dips down toward her thighs, and Miriam starts to go with it but gasps sharply and plucks the hand from her thigh and sets it on the sheet.
“You want to come back to bed?” the woman asks.
“I want to know your name.”
“Didn’t I tell you already?” She laughs. “Maybe I didn’t. We were pretty drunk.”
“I’m still a little drunk.”
“Me too.” And the hand is back again, the snake up the tree, the vine up the fencepost, and once more Miriam pushes back the shivers and the desire and – less gently this time – plucks the invader’s hand off of her. “OK. Sorry.”
“It’s not – you don’t need to apologize. Obviously we had fun–”
Here the girl’s smile transforms into a sharp blade wicked enough to take a man’s head from his neck.
“–but I still don’t know your name.”
“Gabby.”
“That’s a horrible name.” That comment darts out of her mouth like a cat seeing an open door – just no catching it and putting it back inside.
The woman – Gabby – sits up. “Hey.”
“No, I don’t mean… I just mean–” And here it goes. “Names are very important; they’re how we see people, and no matter who a person is, a funky name will cling to you like an ugly wet dress and nobody will see who you really are, they’ll just see the ugly dress. Right? Like what if George Clooney was named Artie Finklenuts. Or if Marie Curie was, I dunno, Grimelda Shatblossom.”
“Gabby is not an ugly dress name.”
“It’s not, it’s not, but it sounds like you talk a lot. Gabby. Gab.” Her hand forms a little alligator puppet whose chompy mouth opens and closes in a mimicry of talking. “Gab gab gab. Is your full name Gabrielle? See, I like that. That’s pretty. You should go with that.”
“No,” the woman says, her voice suddenly steely, her words bled dry of any of the lust that had been present. “My parents named me Gabby. That is my name. Gabby. Not Gabrielle. Or Gabriella. Or anything else. Gabby.”
“They named you after a nickname? Cruel move.”
“Go to hell.”
“You’re pissed.”
“Yes! I’m pissed. We had a good night – Jesus, did we have a good night – and now you wake up and you’re just being mean.”
Miriam scooches to the edge of the bed. Looks for her panties. Spies them on the ground in a little black pile. “I should go.”
“I guess you should.”
Miriam grabs her panties with her toes like a primate, then begins pulling them up over her hips. “I’m not trying to piss on your parade and call it rain. Before I walked into that rum bar, I was having a strange night. You caught me when I was vulnerable. I’m not good people.”
Gabby makes a sound like she just ate a spoonful of salt when she thought she was getting sugar. “Really? You’re one of those?”
“One of those what?”
“Those types.”
“Those types of what?”
“Girls. Women. Who…who think they’re all damaged and broken and they’re anxious or depressed and so they just… inflict themselves on other people. Ugh! You let them in and everything seems cool but then comes the excuses, the I’m not worth it, the I’m bad for you, Gabby. So sorry, thanks for the quick lay–” She rolls her head back on her neck and groans. “Stupid! So stupid, Gabby. Jesus.”
“I am bad for other people. At this point I think it’s scientifically proven.” She mutters, “I’m sure it’s on the Internet somewhere.”
Gabby flops back on the bed. From behind her hands she moans, “Another one. I found another one. Why am I always attracted to your type?” She buries her face under the pillow.
Miriam sits back down on the edge of the bed. Gets her jeans halfway up her legs and then just sits there. Staring off at an unfixed point a thousand miles away. Guilt and shame make a bitter cocktail inside her. She finishes pulling on her jeans and she goes over to Gabby and pries the pillow off the other woman’s head.
“I’m sorry you think I’m mean.”
“Worst kind of apology ever. It puts the blame on me. It says I should really be the one apologizing to you for… misinterpreting what was obviously a loving gesture.”
“Fine. I’m sorry I was mean.”
“OK. Great. Awesome. You can go now.”
But Miriam hovers. “It’s been a while.”
“Been a while since what?”
“Since–” She gesticulates over the bed in all its sex-rumpled grandeur. “Since this.”
“Since you got some.”
“Almost got into it with this dude last year–” But he turned out to be one of a whole nest of serial killers. “But that did not work out.”
“A dude. Oh. So, I’m your first woman.”
“What? Hey. No. You’re not the first love-puddle in which I’ve snorkeled. Though, ah, it’s been a few years.”
“You’re not gay.”
“No. I like to think I’m loosey-goosey–”
“You’re a straight girl on a gay vacation.”
“Jiggling Jesus, don’t be so dramatic, it’s called being flexible–”
“You’re just renting out my pussy like it’s a vacation home.”
“Oh, come on, ‘renting out’–”
Wham. It hits her. Vacation home. Rental. Duh. Duh. Whoever is messing with her rented that house on Torch Key. Which she already knew. All she has to do is contact the people who rented it out and find out to whom they rented it – easy-peasy titty-squeezy.
“I gotta go,” Miriam says.
“No, this isn’t… It’s not… This isn’t you, this is something else, this is a problem I maybe just figured out. Someone’s messing with me, and I don’t like it.”
“I know the feeling. So go.”
“I’ll call you.”
“You don’t even have my number!”
But Miriam doesn’t hear her because she’s already out the door, darting toward the Fiero.
INTERLUDE
NOW
“That’s when you got pulled over,” Grosky says.
Miriam gives a half shrug. “Not exactly. The fucking car died on me ten minutes out of Key West. I paraded around and kick-punched the car a buncha times and then, next thing I know, blue-and-reds. They made me do the alphabet backwards – which, for the record, I cannot do sober – and they said I was too drunk to drive and blah blah blah.”
Vills leans in. “What was your plan? What did you think you could accomplish at that hour of the morning?”
“I was going to go back to the Torch Key house. Pound on the door. Wake Peter up if he was still there – if not, break in. People had to have contact information in there somewhere.”
“Then what?”
“Call them. Ask them.”
“Why would they give out that information to you?”
“I don’t know! I can be persuasive. Or violent. It wasn’t a super-awesome plan, OK? Did you or did you not hear the part where I was drunk?”
Grosky shrugs. “You know, if you hadn’t been caught that night, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Then hoorah for fate throwing us together,” she says with an eye roll.
“Seriously. You showed up on our radar just as we were looking for you. You take a pretty rough-looking mug-shot. It’s funny now, hearing the story, because I said to Vills – Vills, what did I say to you when I saw Miriam’s mug shot here?”
Vills says, “He said, ‘Looks like she has JBF hair.’”
“‘Just Been Fucked’ hair,” Grosky clarifies.
“Clever,” Miriam says.