The More They Disappear

by Jesse Donaldson

  “Become a gentleman rustic?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Where would he get that kind of money?”

  Jackson dropped the pen and let it make a mark on a pad of paper. “Exactly,” he said. “No way he has that kind of cash without other investors, right? I don’t trust it. Besides, the price of that land just went up.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Mussels.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You read the paper?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, the docks for the paper mill are still in good shape. My father rebuilt them before the rest burned, so I figure that might be attractive to a certain gambling ship that needs a new home.” Jackson put one finger in the air just as an Italian woman cried a mournful vowel over rising timpanis. “Beautiful,” he said.

  “Do you think Trip knew about the Silver Spoon’s environmental troubles when he asked you to sell?”

  “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, does it? The land is mine.”

  * * *

  Mary Jane kept two steps ahead of Mark as they walked to the party. When he tried to catch up, she quickened the pace, and he played it off as if he didn’t care. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t apologized, hadn’t at least tried to make amends. As they got dressed for the party, he kept talking about how everything was going to work out but she was tired of false promises. The worst part was that Mark wanted to go back to Marathon and hadn’t even considered how that might make her feel. When she tried to explain, he brushed off her concerns and said they needed the cash and it wasn’t debatable. Mary Jane wished he’d take a leap of faith and leave that moment, but Mark wanted precise instructions, as if there were a set of prerequisites to running away. It was a difference between them that made her doubt whether life in Canada would be all she’d dreamt.

  She followed the rumble of drum and bass to the front yard of a falling-apart triplex. The crowd was a mix of punk rockers, hippie girls in flowing skirts, and trust-fund kids sporting blazers. All held red plastic cups. A couple of jocks patrolled the grass, tossing a football in the scant streetlight. The revelry was welcome medicine for the numbed silence that had developed between her and Mark. She turned back to him and said, “I’m going to find Vince.”

  “Go ahead,” he replied, fingering the bottle of pills he’d stashed in his pocket.

  On the porch a pair of kegs floated in garbage pails of icy water and someone handed her a beer. Inside strobe lights flashed and shadows danced and pressed against one another. Hips clasped, legs wreathed. A dreadlocked boy walked in and Mary Jane thought maybe it was Vince, but this boy was shorter and wore khaki shorts and a collared shirt. A thin blonde hung on his arm, and as he walked by, he handed Mary Jane half a blunt and said, “Finish that for me, love.” The girl laughed as they walked into an empty room and shut the door.

  The pulse of a lazy drumbeat looped and Mary Jane leaned against the wall to feel it. Then a mousy girl with a long face and a crown of plastic flowers came out of the haze to share the spliff. She handed Mary Jane a pill that flashed butterfly in the strobe and popped one herself. “It’s E,” she whispered. Mary Jane swallowed the pill with the last of her beer and an airy sensation took over. When the blunt burned down to fingertip passes, the girl tossed it to the ground and stamped it with bare feet. Then she took Mary Jane’s hands into her own and asked her to spin. And so they spun.

  Lights pulsed and Mary Jane’s body pulled back into nothingness, but the girl’s hands kept her in the present, and through those hands Mary Jane felt the beat of her heart. Their spin slowed into an embrace and they fell cross-legged to the floor. Stars wandered the room, revealing flashes of the girl’s face. There was laughter. The girl leaned forward, her bloodshot eyes briefly seen before she fell against Mary Jane’s chest. “You’re soft,” she murmured. She seemed less girl than creature.

  Above them, looming, crooked teeth glowed into a grin. Vince. “Join us.” The girl’s voice rose from Mary Jane’s chest, its breathiness touching the soft skin of her throat. “Join.” Vince’s deep voice reverberated down as the drone of fuzzy guitars glided over a backbeat. His arms lifted them up. Two girls at once! The creature’s crown fell and rolled like a coin, settling on a spot in the center of the floor where it was danced upon. Around them bodies lay prone on couches and slouched against walls. Mary Jane’s feet followed Vince’s to a bedroom decorated with lava lamps and posters of fleshy women and metal bands. Vince strummed an unplugged electric guitar and pulled a handle of vodka from the dark.

  More faces appeared and the vodka circled. Mary Jane pulled out a bag of pills and handed it to Vince—the master of ceremonies. Madcap came into the room and checked her tattoo. “Remember to put lotion on it,” he said.

  The circle wanted to see and tendered their sincerest compliments. The room was aglow. Someone lit a pipe and the sweet smell of pot rose into the air as a glass tray with lines of Oxy passed clockwise. They broke bread. Everything was beautiful and rhythmic. Toke pass breathe smell smile snort pass breathe. When the world fell into order, such wonderful things seemed possible.

  Mary Jane felt herself float above the room, her eyes looking down like a traffic reporter in the sky. People laughed at a joke. Hers! And glancing backs of hands found thighs and laughter brought forth heaving bellies and chests and led to innocent kisses. Then someone broke the circle and others followed, but Mary Jane stayed—a blank look in her eyes.

  Vince’s touch brought her back. He traced the inside of her leg and Mary Jane held his hand there. The girl creature curled into them and her lips, disconnected things, found Vince and then Mary Jane. Lips upon arms and necks and lips upon lips. The lava lamp kicked onto its side—its dark glob suspended—and clothes separated from bodies and were tossed like bones to the fire. Offerings. Clunky, painful knockings. An elbow against the floor, the palm of a hand against her breast. All of it mixed with the ecstasy of skin touching skin, of not knowing where each body began or ended. Vince led them, guided Mary Jane down. She unbuttoned his pants, took him in her dry, sour mouth. Her swollen tongue throbbed a dull, comforting pain. The girl pulled off Mary Jane’s jeans and underwear and reached under her own dress. There were too many sensations—the soft flesh of Vince, the tongue playing against her clit. Pleasure rising into one. Vince came in her mouth and Mary Jane leaned back, eyes lolling in her head like a blind man’s while the girl brought her to climax. The door cracked open and Mary Jane turned to look. A familiar face in its sliver of light. “Mark,” she whimpered as she came, her body shuddering as the door shut again.

  “What’s that?” Vince said, kissing her on the neck. The creature rose and took them in her arms. “Sshhh,” she said. “Sshhh.” The other two turned into sleeping lambs, but Mary Jane couldn’t sleep. She didn’t belong anymore. She fumbled in the scant light for her clothes. Her skin felt sticky. Vince mumbled, but the creature stroked his chest and soothed him to sleep. Mary Jane tottered away on shaky legs.

  The partygoers in the living room danced a boozy ballet. She fell into a girl and laughed a sick laugh, fell into a boy whose push spurred her to another. A bumper-car room. She tumbled her way to the front door and steadied herself in its frame. Mark stood by himself in the yard, the street lamp revealing a bottle of booze in his hand. Mark in mourning. Over her! She staggered to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. The words came to her without thinking, not really her words. She wasn’t sorry. She put a finger through his belt loop. “You know I love you.”

  “Fuck you,” Mark snarled.

  Mary Jane pushed herself into him. Mark’s words couldn’t hurt her. Words were meaningless. Fuck words. Fuck those. She risked a hand toward his crotch. You can have me too, it said. He pulled away, but she clutched him. He was such a flimsy boy.

  “Don’t,” he said, but she didn’t listen and his body responded.

  “Do it!” someone shouted from behind them.

  Mark�
��s feet tripped backward as they moved around the side of the house and found space between two bare shrubs. Mary Jane pushed him to the ground and undid his belt. Her hands were dulled from the drugs and her body told her to stop, but she knew what needed to be done. Mark, spurred on by his erection, took over. Neither of them spoke. He pulled at her underwear with shaky hands, not wanting to continue, not wanting to stop. How much can you hurt me? they asked each other. How much can I hurt myself?

  Mark pushed inside her and she closed her eyes. Her jeans hung useless from one leg as the trees hovered above. A rock burrowed into the small of her back but Mark didn’t notice or care. With her head back, Mary Jane’s tongue threatened to choke her, and the skin of her tattoo rubbed against the ground, a burning sensation each time Mark pressed down.

  She opened her eyes as he worked, an amateur trying to make himself come hard and fast. His arms shook from the effort, but in his eyes there was nothing, a vacant stare, and he started to go limp.

  “Quit looking,” he said.

  Mary Jane knew they couldn’t recover from this. Mark softened but stubbornly continued to push, limp-dick fucking her, not willing to give in. Mary Jane started to laugh, not at him, but at the situation. She’d trusted a boy who didn’t even know how to use his cock. She’d thought that he was the one to love her, the one to take her away and give her all the unnamed things she wanted, but he didn’t even know his own body. At least she knew hers, had come to terms with it. It was imperfect, ugly even, but she could work it in ways Mark would never be able to work his.

  His hand, open, slapped her and came back, knuckles across her cheek. Mary Jane laughed again as he buckled his pants. Mark strained for something to say, but she’d convinced him. Words didn’t matter.

  As he walked away, Mary Jane pulled her jeans up and let the cool air take the sting from her face. It was over. She’d leave Mark behind like she’d left her parents. She’d search for new places, new people. She’d haunt all their dreams.

  She heard the sounds of the party being busted—loud voices, running feet, squealing tires—but she didn’t move. The cops found her and two burly arms lifted. Mary Jane made a sound like vomiting, though nothing came out save a pearly white spit that stretched from her slack mouth. “Excuse me,” she said. Her stomach reeled. They asked her what happened but she didn’t want to remember. Sex? Sure. Rape? No. Drugs? Of course. Names? She didn’t know. She was innocent. Innocent.

  The cops sat her in the grass until the ambulance arrived, and when the EMTs loaded her onto a gurney, she lisped, “Hi boys,” but neither cracked a smile. She heard the word intercourse, which made her smile. Such a silly word for fucking. The windows of Vince’s house were dark as they rolled her to the ambulance, and she wondered if he’d looked for her. “Relax,” one of the EMTs said as he stuck her with a needle. Then the driver pressed the gas and the liquid started to course through her veins—hot and sweet.

  ten

  The doctor pumped Mary Jane’s stomach and brought out the night’s wreckage as a nurse injected her with knockout, and when she came to, she was greeted by her mother’s creased face and thin lips. Mary Jane turned her head away and focused on the IV bag dripping clear liquid down a tube inserted into her forearm. On the other side of a pale-blue curtain the neighboring patient snored.

  “You’re okay, baby girl,” Lyda said. “I’m here now.” Mary Jane hoped she was dreaming, that she’d wake up in Mark’s apartment and everything would be as it was before, but Lyda touched her hair and broke the illusion. “I’m here,” she said again.

  “Where’s Dad?” Mary Jane muttered.

  “He’s at home.”

  “He wasn’t worried?”

  Lyda sighed. “That’s not fair,” she said. “He’s worried but it’s been a strange night. And you know your father. He’s a little disappointed.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Shouldn’t he be disappointed? The doctors said you could have died. And for what?” Her mother’s words started to turn sour. “Do you know what it’s like to be woken up in the middle of the night? To be told your only child is in the hospital?” She shook her head. “What were you thinking? You weren’t thinking, were you?”

  Mary Jane yawned and closed her eyes, managed to ignore her mother’s questions.

  A nurse came by later and informed her that she’d been discharged but that a couple of police officers needed to talk with her first.

  Lyda jumped up from her chair and said, “All she did was have too much to drink.”

  The nurse unfolded a wheelchair. “I have to usher you out when they’re done. It’s hospital policy.”

  Lyda intercepted the cops in the hallway. Mary Jane tried to listen but their voices were muted by the heavy door. On the other side of the curtain, her neighbor turned and moaned. Mary Jane didn’t know what the police wanted but it didn’t matter. There was nowhere left for her to run.

  Lyda came back in the room. “They said you had sex last night. That you may have been raped?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t have to tell you about my sex life.”

  “Mary Jane, this is serious. If anyone tried to force themselves on you—”

  “They didn’t.”

  Lyda placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay to talk about it. There’s no reason to be ashamed.”

  “I wasn’t raped!” Mary Jane screamed. “And I’m allowed to sleep with whoever I want. Just like you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  One of the cops opened the door. “Ma’am,” he said. “We need to talk with her alone. If you could step out into the hallway.”

  “But I’m her mother.”

  Mary Jane muttered the word “whore,” though she couldn’t be sure Lyda heard.

  “I understand,” the cop said. “But it’s better if you wait in the hall.”

  Lyda patted Mary Jane’s hand. “Just be honest with them,” she said.

  The cops wore cropped haircuts and crisp blue uniforms and strutted like boys she’d known in high school. Cocksure, the both of them, though the one who’d spoken to her mother had a paunch for a belly and puffy, tired eyes. “Mary Jane Finley?” he said, reading her name off a notepad. His partner rested one hand on his baton. He looked like he spent more time in the gym than fighting crime. Mary Jane tried not to shake beneath the covers. “Do you mind if I call you Mary Jane?” She shrugged. “We want to ask you a couple questions. I hope your mother explained that we’re here to help.”

  Mary Jane didn’t believe a word he said.

  The second cop started in. “You had drugs in your system. You may not have known what you were taking, but it would help if you told us where you got them.”

  Mary Jane sat up, brought her knees close to her chest. “I don’t really know.”

  The first cop checked his notepad. “It says here you were at a party. How’d you end up there?”

  “I walked.”

  “Come on now.”

  “I mean it. I was walking and followed the noise.”

  “So you were alone?”

  She nodded. Mark had been two steps behind but it was truer to say she was alone.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. I was alone.”

  “Had you taken any drugs before you went to the party?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “So you got them there?”

  “Yeah. It was really dark, though. Someone handed me a couple pills and I swallowed them. I guess that was a dumb thing to do.”

  The cop wrote in his notepad. “The person who handed you the pills. Do you remember them?”

  “No.”

  “Male or female?”

  Mary Jane remembered the mousy girl with the crown of flowers, her soft lips and downy skin. “A girl,” she said.

  The cops shared a look. “Did you know her?”

  “I don’t even
live here. I don’t know anyone.”

  “So you just walked into the party uninvited?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  The meathead cop jumped back in. “This girl. Did you get a look at her?”

  “Like I said, it was pretty dark.”

  “Anything you can tell us would help.”

  “I think she had long hair. And a soft voice. I remember that.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “I don’t know. A dress?”

  “You don’t remember anything else.”

  “We only met for a moment.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yeah,” Mary Jane said. “Strange.”

  Mary Jane’s confidence grew with each lie she fed them. They weren’t here about Lew. They didn’t know her. To them she was just another dumb girl who’d OD’d. She caught sight of her mother’s face in the door’s sliver of glass and threw her a smile.

  “Just a couple more questions,” the pudgy cop said.

  She nodded.

  “Do you want a glass of water?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay then.” He smiled at her. He was trying his best. “You told the officers last night that you had sex. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is tough to ask, Mary Jane, but was the sex consensual?”

  She hesitated.

  “What I mean is, did someone force you—”

  “No.”

  “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  “I’m not.”

  “A lot of times victims—”

  “I’m not a victim.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wanted to have sex with him.”

  “With who?”

  “The boy.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  The cop sighed. “What did he look like?”

  “He was cute.”

  “Mary Jane.”

  “It was consensual.”

  The first cop nodded. “Why don’t you go wait in the hall,” he said to his partner. “Mary Jane, we have a kit that lets us test for DNA in case you decide you were taken advantage of. It would help us find that person. It would be a nurse who collected the sample, not me or my partner.”