by J. Boyett
For a second it seemed like Mal would ignore the question. Then she said, “I’m hoping she has that guy Bryce’s number written down in here somewhere.”
“Why?”
“Somebody has to take her home. I’ve got to go to work, and I don’t think we should ask her dad.”
Ken stood with his arms crossed, looking down like a scientist on the mangled wreck of the girl at his feet. “Why my daddy?!!!” Her voice sounded like nails being scraped down a blackboard in a cave under deep water. It seemed from the redness of Sherry’s face that her heart was pumping all its blood there alone, and it occurred to Joyce that there was something crazy about this fit, something beyond Sherry being just plain furious, horrified, and broken. She hoped Mal would find Bryce’s number and she wouldn’t have to look after Sherry herself. “Ken,” she said. “That’s enough.”
Ken looked at her. “I’m not doing anything anymore,” he mildly pointed out.
Mal sighed, checked her watch, and dumped Sherry’s purse out on the floor. She sifted through the junk, oblivious to Sherry’s inarticulate cry. Finally, in triumph, Mal held up a scrap of paper and went into Ken’s bedroom, which was where he kept the phone. He didn’t make a fuss about no one having asked him if it was okay to use his telephone, too absorbed in the ongoing experiment. Joyce watched him.
Sherry gradually wore down. Her raggedy throat couldn’t scream anymore. Now there were just moans, punctuated by shallow breaths. These subsided into wheezings and whimpers. She didn’t move; she lay on her belly on the stained floor, fists hiding the sides of her face.
Once it was clear that she wasn’t going to holler anymore, Ken got bored. He said to Joyce, “Those guys ought to be showing up soon. You can fuck one of them or not, I don’t care, tell them both to get lost if you want to. I’m going to smoke a joint in the back, so if you do stick around don’t use that room. Tell Mal she can stop using the closet if she wants, since there’s only two of you now. Which is how many it was supposed to be in the first place. I’ll still charge her the same price.”
Joyce remembered that one time up in the Honors Forum when he’d put his hands all over her tits, and she’d pretended like it was all a big joke and had admired his audacity. Now she understood how it hadn’t mattered that she was his platonic friend. Or, rather, it had been necessary to make her a platonic friend so that the laying of the hands on the tits would mean something. Joyce whispered gently to Sherry and tried to coax her up off the floor. But she couldn’t get any response at all.
Mal came back and said that Bryce was hurrying over to pick her up. “What a fucking dumb-ass waste,” she said, and Joyce was unsure whether Mal was referring to Bryce being wasted on such melodramatic skag, or to the destruction Ken had wrought, or what. But who gave a shit.
Soon they heard Bryce’s car screech to a stop before the front yard, and then he’d burst in with red eyes and went straight for Sherry. He murmured something to her that persuaded her to get up. “I don’t have no daddy no more,” Sherry gasped. Bryce shushed her. The two johns showed up as Bryce was taking care of Sherry, and had to be convinced that, no, no one was going to fuck them after all. They consoled themselves by smirking at the sight of Bryce leading Sherry out, her shuffling along like a stroke victim. The johns recognized Sherry—she’d fucked one of them—and they figured this spectacle was the aftermath of Bryce having discovered his girlfriend was a whore. They had a laugh over his red eyes and geekiness, and the extreme state of pussy-whippedness he must be in not to be beating the shit out of the girl. Then they took off.
With the lovers gone, Joyce walked Mal to her car. Neither of them said goodbye to Ken. Mal climbed in, turned the ignition, and made a wry face at Joyce. “And then there were three,” she said.
She pulled out of the driveway. Joyce waved after her and then began the walk to campus. Mal’s remark confused her until it dawned on her that Mal was including Ken.
10.
Joyce assumed the brothel was finished. She and Mal were scheduled to fuck again on Friday, which would give her plenty of time to call Ken and give notice, so he wouldn’t wind up with a couple of sullen johns on his couch. She would do that—be nice, professional, grown-up. Then she’d give herself a couple weeks to cool off before hanging out with him again. This was her plan as she opened the door to her dorm room the next day, saw Mal smoking on the windowsill, flung her backpack onto the floor, and plopped onto her narrow bed. For a little while they didn’t speak. Even with the window open, the air was acrid with smoke.
At last Joyce said, “I don’t guess you’re going over to Ken’s on Friday, are you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Joyce stared at her. “After all that shit that went down yesterday? Are you serious?”
“The only thing different is that Sherry won’t be there.”
“But Ken was such an asshole. I mean, Mal, he was such an asshole.”
“Like I said: the only thing different is that Sherry won’t be there. There was always a lot of ugliness inherent in the whole thing.”
“Inherent is one thing. Screaming and blubbering in my face is another.”
“Same thing to me.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re tough.”
“It’s easy money. But I can see why you wouldn’t want to go back. Anyway, you don’t need the extra cash.”
There wasn’t anything in Mal’s tone that wasn’t simply matter-of-fact. Nevertheless, Joyce ducked her head and concentrated on her chewed-up nails. “Naw, every little bit helps. I just figured you weren’t going to show up. But if you’re going, then, you know. I’m still down.”
Mal gazed out the window and took another drag of her cigarette.
After Mal left for Foxy’s, Joyce listened to her stereo for a while, then decided to turn in early. She was brushing her teeth when she heard the door in the next room open. Cringing at the thought of seeing Sherry, she decided to rinse her mouth as quietly as possible, turn off the light, slip under the covers, and, if Sherry knocked, make like she’d been sleeping for hours. But then she heard a low, solicitous male voice, and Sherry’s unsteady reply. So Bryce was in there. The temptation to get some juicy tidbit outweighed her dread of seeing Sherry. Joyce arrested the motion of her toothbrush so as to be absolutely quiet, continuing to hold the thing in her mouth as if she were a statue. If someone entered, she would start brushing again, giving herself an excuse for being here within such easy earshot. She had a clear picture of sweet, worried Bryce escorting an invalid Sherry across the room to her bed, holding her elbow.
They spoke in tones too low to be made out clearly, but Joyce could tell that Bryce was asking if there was anything else he could do, and Sherry was replying with one-syllable grunts
. . . . Footsteps toward the bathroom! Joyce started brushing her teeth again. From the steady tread she knew this was Bryce, walking alone and not escorting Sherry. He opened the door and recoiled when he saw Joyce. Then he grimaced and glanced sidelong at Sherry, somewhere out of Joyce’s sight, and entered, pulling the door closed behind him. “Sorry,” he whispered delicately, as if Sherry’s condition was so precarious that she couldn’t be allowed even the mild shock of learning that Joyce was in the bathroom.
Joyce tried to smile and whisper “That’s okay” through a mouthful of foam. She spat and rinsed while Bryce stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable. Obviously he had come there to pee, but was too delicate to say so to Joyce (apparently fucking whores in a brothel had been more delicate). He couldn’t leave and come back in a few minutes, because he didn’t want to tell Sherry that Joyce was there and conjure up the girls’ last meeting. He was at a loss.
Joyce ignored his dilemma. “How is she?” she asked, making her concerned face.
Bryce shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and raised his bony shoulders even higher, looking down at his shoes. “Pretty bad,” he murmured. “I’ve been having to beg her to eat. And she won’t call her father, even
though I keep telling her it’s best to get it over with as soon as possible.”
“Uh. I don’t know about that,” Joyce whispered.
Bryce looked at her like she’d also suffered some trauma. “But he’ll still love her.”
“Well. I mean, not necessarily.”
Bryce shook his head. “Nobody could stay mad at Sherry. Nobody would have the heart to.” His fists bunched up in his pockets, and his whisper turned sandpapery. “I mean, how could that asshole do that to her? It’s the meanest thing I’ve ever even heard of. I never thought evil people really existed, you know? I thought they were only in books and movies.”
“Oh, I don’t think Ken’s evil, exactly. . . .”
“Then what the heck do you call a prank like that?! I told you, she can barely eat!”
“I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with him. Just, I kind of know where he’s coming from.”
Bryce’s fists came out of his pockets. The volume of his voice stayed low, but it got harder. “You hate Sherry that much, huh?”
“No! I just mean, I guess I’ve done the same sort of thing before.”
“You have? As what that guy did to Sherry?”
“Oh, kind of. My first boyfriend, when I was thirteen and he was seventeen.” Joyce forced a laugh and waved her hands dismissively. “You know, he sort of blew his brains out and all that.”
“What? Jeez. Why?”
“Oh, you know, because of me, sort of.” Joyce wondered why she was still talking. A flat sheen had covered her field of vision, and microscopic red-hot needles were being inserted into every pore of her face.
Bryce looked all concerned and kind and sweet and stuff. “What do you think you did?”
Joyce backed out of the bathroom, laughing and forgetting to whisper. “Oh, you know, I made fun of him, and I was like Ken.” She shut the bathroom door behind her and switched off the light and got into bed.
The next day Joyce vomited twice before leaving for the brothel, like an amateur. As she knelt on the tile with her head in the toilet bowl, she found herself unable to erase the image of Ken standing with his arms crossed, looking unfeelingly down upon her dying comrade.
She was late to the brothel, but so were the johns—there was no sign of them. Ken was on the floor doing homework, and Mal was smoking on the loveseat.
“Where are they?” Joyce shouted.
Ken jumped as if he were actually startled, though it was impossible to tell for sure. “Why, you on a schedule or something?”
“God damn you, Ken. You’re fucking with us.”
He rolled his eyes and returned to the notebook on his lap. “They’re late, all right? Jesus. Now just sit down, for fuck’s sake, and be quiet. This paper’s due on Monday.”
Joyce plopped down on the sofa and crossed her arms. Mal watched her smolder at Ken. In a desperately provocative way, Joyce said, “How bourgeois, Ken. Doing fucking homework.”
Without looking up or pausing the motion of his pen, Ken murmured, “I am bourgeois, duh. My mom bought my fucking car for me, for fuck’s sake.”
“Well, you sure seemed cutting-edge the other day. That little show you produced, with Sherry.”
“There’s nothing very cutting-edge about a father disowning a fornicating daughter, dude. It’s the oldest trick in the patriarchy.”
“Well, she’s a wreck now.”
“She was always a wreck. She’s only a bigger wreck now because she’s got that sucker there to be all concerned and clean up after her. Look, you’re not going to go all boring too, are you?”
“Or what? You’ll call my step-father and tattle on me?”
“Nah. I’d have to think of something else. Calling Daddy wouldn’t have the same emotional impact for you, since you’ve never exactly been his little princess. . . . But then again, wasn’t the whole point of all this shit originally to piss him off ?”
Joyce blinked. “Oh yeah.” She tried to stay hard, but some of the old amusement seeped in through the cracks. “At the Dixie Café. That was fun.”
Ken wasn’t paying attention to his homework anymore—he looked straight at Joyce, a glimmer in his eye. “Shit. I forgot about that, too. . . . So. What do you think?”
“About telling him?” asked Joyce, with a mix of giddy terror and delight.
“Like I said, wasn’t that the point, once?”
“Sure was. . . . We couldn’t do it the same way you did with Sherry.”
“Of course not. Variety’s, like, the spice of life.”
“Exactly.”
They could have kept going. But Mal ground out her cigarette and said, “Looks like the customers are here.”
Through the narrow doorframe came two beefy boys, red-faced, smirking, entitled, and huge. Only now that the aloe of relief swelled inside her did Joyce realize how frightened she’d been of Ken pulling some prank on her, how nearly sure she’d been that she would look up to see Atchley. Instead, they were the two boys who’d been turned away last time, due to Sherry’s freak-out. Joyce had to stop and concentrate in order to remember whether she had ever fucked either of these guys. She decided she hadn’t. The big one on the left was working a plug of tobacco with his jaws, periodically spitting the stinky brown juice into a Dixie cup that he carried. That was gross, but there was a hint of nervous human goofiness about him, whereas his partner had a sneer pasted to his face that chilled Joyce’s guts.
As Ken introduced them all, Joyce caught Mal’s eye and gave her a surreptitious, pleading look. It had to be quick, lest it be noticed by one of the three guys, and Joyce didn’t think Mal could have registered it. More, she couldn’t see any reason why Mal would want to do Joyce such a big favor, especially when Joyce had never told her about the hideousness with Atchley. Yet Mal, for whatever reason, rose immediately after Joyce sent her that distress call, and selected the sneerer. Joyce tried to remain discreet for now, but told herself that afterwards she would express her gratitude to Mal. They sat through the spiked bat speech one last time, though they did not yet know that it was the last time. Then Joyce led her boy by the hand back to the marijuana room. Mal followed with her john, stopping in Ken’s bedroom. Ken sat on guard in the living room, his spiked bat within easy reach.
Mal began taking off her shirt as soon as the doors were closed. While the T-shirt was still over her head, the john, who stood in the middle of the room, transfixed, fingers wiggling at the ends of his limp arms, said, “Hurry up and get your pants off, bitch.”
Mal folded her shirt over the back of Ken’s desk chair, then reached around to unhook her bra. “I’m already getting undressed.”
“Bitch, I said your pants!”
“Okay, okay, don’t wet yourself.” Laying her bra over the shirt, Mal kicked off her shoes, then undid her zipper. “Why don’t you go ahead and crawl into bed and get ready for me?”
The john shook his head like she’d tried to outsmart him. “Uh-uh, bitch. I’m ready now. And I’m on top. No bitch gets on top of me.”
When fucking strangers—especially creepy ones—Mal preferred the relative control and safety of the top position. But they were paying customers, after all, and she supposed it was reasonable that their predilections be taken into account. Plus, it was hard for Mal to be scared of anyone. She shrugged and took off her panties, then stood before the john with her hands on her hips. “Let’s see your dick,” she said. He hadn’t put her in a very delicate mood.
“Uh-uh, bitch, I’m calling the shots now. Now get your ass in that bed.”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s called a visual check. It’s an industry standard. They do it at the Mustang Ranch.”
The john’s leer faltered. He didn’t know what the Mustang Ranch was.
Mal pointed at her crotch. “You see this pussy? Well, this is as close as you’re going to get to it, unless you give me a look at your dick.”
A sheen of sweat materialized on the john’s forehead. Then his sneer made a comeback: “Go ahead,” he sai
d. “But you’ve got to whip it out.”
“Sure.” She stepped forward, undid his pants, and took his penis out. It was already tumescent—a bonus, since Mal had pegged him as either a guy who would finish lickety-split, or who was well-nigh impotent and would require an annoying bout of coaxing. The top of his dick seemed fine. Mal got on her knees to check its underside and his balls. The area reeked of an acrid, pungent mash of urine, sweat, and smegma. What with her face being so close to his package, the john’s breathing had audibly changed. Rising to her feet, Mal picked up a condom from Ken’s desk and held it out to the john. “Want me to put it on you?” she asked, suspecting he might not know how to do it.
He snatched it from her: “Get in that bed!” Mal wordlessly obeyed.
Lying flat and dead-like on her back, she watched as he put on the condom, to make sure he really did it. Then he climbed on top of her with all his clothes on. Mal stifled a laugh, despite being under no illusion that what was coming would be pleasant. He rammed himself inside her and grunted with pleasure or exertion. Even without foreplay things were not too painful for Mal; she was able to exercise great control over her body, and in another compartment of her mind had already concentrated on a very different and wholly imaginary scene hard enough to lubricate herself. The john doghumped her in arrhythmic bursts, while she laid her hands on him only enough to hold him roughly in place. She thought about the Astronomy class she’d had that day, and the rapid expansion of the universe; also, ways to increase her tips at Foxy’s.
Abruptly the john stopped. Mal just figured he had finished so unspectacularly that she hadn’t even felt it. He’d been pretty fast, too, which was nice. But then he lifted his red sweaty head and said, “Now you’re going to suck my dick, bitch.”
“No way,” she said, hearing the plop of his dick withdrawing from her body. “I only do that for immaculately clean dicks. I mean pink and smooth and reeking of baby powder. Your dick smelled like a swamp, and that was before we got it all covered in spermicide and my own vaginal juices.”