His heart beat fast, fast, fast.
And so loud he thought his ears would explode.
Then she touched him there.
God.
She began rubbing circles though his sweat pants and boxers. Softly. More circles. Then squeezing him. Gently, but firmly. Her hand wrapped around him. Steady tugs. Bones wouldn’t last another second like this. He hummed inside, little explosions of ecstasy, while he lost his innocence in a six-by-eight-foot compartment that wasn’t going up or down.
Alice must have leaned against the control panel, because suddenly the elevator lurched, and they stumbled off balance.
“If you get caught tell Chu Man you were outside looking for me,” she said when the doors opened.
Bones squinted, light flooding in. It was too stark. Too real.
“Tell him I was out front smoking,” she said. “And that I collapsed in the stairwell sneaking back in. Tell him they took me to the ER.”
Alice wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth—all tongue and wet warmth. “But give me a twenty-minute head start, okay?” she said, pulling back slightly.
All he could do was nod in utter bliss and stickiness.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
27
Bones found his way to the stairwell he usually used this time of day when sneaking back in from the roof. It was deserted as always. But it felt good to be alone with all that had just happened. He took each tread one at a time, not caring about how few calories he was burning.
For the first time in eons, he was truly happy—a happiness that swallowed him from his toes to his buzzed head. There was something about the rush of feelings when he’d kissed Alice and she’d kissed him back and her touching him in a way no one ever had. It all seemed so right, like everything real and honest.
Bones opened the door to the fourth floor and scoured the ward for Dr. Chu—his office, the dayroom, and the dining room. Usually Dr. Chu was everywhere at once. Now he was nowhere. Bones felt his nerves being stretched. Not because he was worried about getting busted himself; more because he felt compelled to deliver Alice’s message as promised.
Bones did the only thing he could think of. He wrote a note and slid it under Dr. Chu’s door. He went back to his room, wrapped his red M&M’s in toilet paper, and put them in a sock.
It was time to set up for dinner. He shoved the sock in the back of a drawer and rushed to the dining room. We’ll be a couple tonight. Everyone on the ward will know because we’ll be holding hands during dinner, gazing into each other’s eyes.
His brain went crazy with the things he’d be able to say to her in front of Teresa, Elsie, Mary-Jane, and the others. The TV had been left on again. An old episode of Hell’s Kitchen flickered in a mangle of overwrought emotions. Now those guys need therapy. He hurriedly set up the tables.
A commercial propagated the dangers of leaving dogs unattended in hot cars—the Valley would cool off later in the week, the forecaster said, down to 101 degrees, though the coast could continue to expect a heavy marine layer.
Bones looked up when Teresa came in. Her eyes were as swollen as the first day he saw her. It looked like she’d been grinding them with salt after an eyewash of pickled beet juice.
She stared at him accusingly, as if she’d caught him pilfering Lucky Charms from the kitchen. “Where’ve you guys been?” she asked.
Bones shrugged, knowing what she was talking about; he just didn’t know how to answer. He stammered, trying to think of something that would be believable. He wasn’t coming up with anything.
“Uh, handling an urgent situation,” he finally said.
Teresa stood in the middle of the room, slumped. Air wouldn’t hold her up much longer. She looked like someone had cut out her heart and pummeled it with a frying pan. And that’s pretty much what had happened. “Did I do something wrong…I mean, is Lard mad at me?”
How could he tell her the truth? Without making her feel worse? That Alice had planned an outing that turned into the best day of his life?
“It was sort of last minute,” he said, sounding like the dirty rotten liar he was. “But Lard isn’t mad at you—I’m sure of that.”
Teresa took a few steps backward, bumping a wooden chair, sitting down so hard he expected splinters. “Sometimes I feel like that blue hippo on the cartoon channel. You know the one I mean?”
“Come on, Teresa.”
“If I tried to walk on water I’d sink,” she said. “I have stubby hippo legs and beady hippo eyes.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know people stare at me.” Her face sank into her hands, making it hard to hear her. “Sometimes I pretend I’m already the perfect weight so I can stop being overwhelmed by what I should and shouldn’t eat.”
“I’ve spent most of my life comparing myself to others,” Bones said sitting down beside her. “But what’s the point? Someone will always be more confident. Smarter, wittier.”
“Tanner.”
“Exactly.”
“I can still fit into the earrings I wore in kindergarten,” she said, smiling.
Bones knew what he had to say—it was long overdue. “I’m sorry for not being friendly when I first got here. I was such a jerk.”
Then he shrugged.
Teresa shrugged too.
And they both sort of laughed.
This was the longest conversation they’d had one-on-one.
“You wouldn’t believe what I used to think about you,” she said.
That didn’t surprise him. He’d heard it all. Some nights he and Lard talked about the girls like regular guys. Another way to fry time.
“You sure Lard isn’t mad at me?” she asked again.
Bones shook his head. “He likes you a lot.”
They were quiet awhile.
Teresa picked at her nail polish and watched it flake. Then Nancy appeared with tablecloths, ugly plaid with frayed edges. Bones watched her, thinking she moved too efficiently and without her usual chitchat. He knew something was up—it came from years of experience with shrinks.
When Alice didn’t show up for dinner Bones figured she’d gotten busted. He kicked himself for leaving the note, because if she hadn’t gotten caught sneaking back into the ward, she sure as hell would have been after Dr. Chu read it. He could only imagine what type of punishment he’d dish up.
“What’s the matter?” Teresa asked him.
Bones shrugged, worrying about Alice. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to force himself to go through the motions of pretending nothing was wrong.
The first thing Bones noticed after crawling into bed after being away from the hospital was the hypoallergenic wintergreen air freshener that had probably never been used in experiments on rats, otherwise it wouldn’t have been allowed in institutions that housed human beings.
He lay there in his boxers feeling like he knew where he was in relationship to Alice even when they weren’t together. He felt warm in all the places she’d touched him. And even though they didn’t go all the way, what they did together, what she did to him, had all the elements to it. Excitement and a secret connection with Alice.
“Teresa’s pissed,” Lard said from his bed. “I don’t blame her.”
“Nah, she’s more hurt than mad.”
“I like her, man,” Lard said quietly. “Sure she’s a little emotional sometimes, and she has a substantial butt, but hey, we all have our quirks. I really think she’s the one. And she feels the same way about me, at least she did until today. That’s a first, man, usually it’s one-sided. I fucked up. Bad.”
Bones felt crappy all over again.
“I’m not gonna be one of those jerks who falls asleep after the act,” Lard said. “While my girlfriend strokes my forehead worrying that the condom leaked and she’s gonna have to raise an army of little Lards.”
“You think we’ll ever be smart about women?” Bones asked.
“I think we’ll always be like this—even when we’re thirty.”
“Sad, huh?”
“Alice must’ve gotten nabbed,” Lard said.
Bones breathed into the stale air. “I feel guilty that she got caught and we didn’t.”
“Not me.”
Suddenly Bones was back in the elevator with Alice. This time they were both naked. She was licking her lips hungrily while he fed her peanut M&M’s from the bag. He let her feed him one—remembering how good they tasted, realizing he must be some kind of freak, because he was getting hard all over again.
Bones and Lard were jolted awake sometime before dawn by overhead lights and a maniac in a two-piece jogging suit with turquoise piping. “Get up,” Dr. Chu told them.
Bones sat up too fast, nearly falling out of bed. The room was too fluorescent. The voice too loud and authorial.
“Where is she?” Dr. Chu asked.
Bones squinted at him, his heart thudding.
Lard rubbed his eyes. “Who?”
“Don’t feed me that crap, Mr. Kowlesky. I know the three of you took off yesterday—and we’ll deal with that later, believe me—but Alice never came back and you can’t tell me you don’t know where she went.”
Lard’s hair looked like greased crow feathers. “Huh?”
Dr. Chu stood between their beds, his stare heating up the room. He was about to fry them up for breakfast. Pigs in a blanket. “Let me restate this,” he said. “Alice came back to the ward but only to clean out her room.”
Bones wondered if he was dreaming. Usually when he asked himself that question he woke up.
“As of five minutes ago—exactly five forty-eight a.m.—she hadn’t shown up at home either. That means she’s been missing for fourteen hours. Her parents have called the police. I expect them here anytime.”
Dr. Chu’s words were little blowtorches. Bones swallowed hard, choking on ash. He couldn’t wrap his brain around it. This couldn’t be happening, wasn’t supposed to happen. Just last night they were in the elevator. Alone. They’d kissed, really kissed—tongues and hot breath. They’d touched. She’d touched him there.
“She ran away?” Bones finally said.
When Dr. Chu glared, his eyes were steel barrels of a .44. “Get dressed. In my office. Now.”
Then he left.
Lard scrambled for his glasses. “Surprise party, my fat ass,” he said, fully awake. “It was a going-away party. Hers.”
“No, something must have happened—” Bones’s heart had shriveled to a dark spot, sloughed off, ready for a biopsy. “Something we don’t know about. After the two of us split up in the elevator, something—”
Lard turned to him, his glasses half cocked in an awkward pause. “She planned it, man. Every damned detail.”
“No, she—”
“Jesus, how could we be so stupid? Alice doesn’t need Tampax. She probably hasn’t had a period in years.”
Bones stood there so confused about everything.
“That happens to girls who don’t have any fat,” Lard said, grabbing a pair of pants off the floor. “Time’s up. Chu Man’s waiting.”
Bones put on sweats and slammed out behind him. At the last second, he changed directions and ducked into Alice’s room. Bones felt alone and afraid in the lifeless space. Her bed had been stripped to a stained plastic mattress pad. The linens were piled in a heap on the floor. How could the staff be sure she wasn’t coming back?
Then he thought, Maybe Alice stripped it herself.
He picked up one of the sheets. It smelled like Marlboros and Preparation H.
Alice.
Why?
Where?
He couldn’t make sense of it.
Then something caught his eye, in the corner below the window. Her wastebasket, filled with crumpled paper. Bones dropped the sheets onto the bed. He emptied the basket, picked up one piece of paper, smoothed it out, and then another.
Damn.
Pages from the magazine she’d painted.
Alice had licked off every bit of Ex-Lax.
Bones couldn’t believe it.
Could. Not. Believe. It.
I should have taken the magazine away from her.
He sat on the cold floor, staring up at her bulletin board. It was bare too. He went back to the mess on the floor until he found what he was looking for and then checked his watch for today’s date. Auditions. Today at the opera house downtown.
Bones hurried back to his room to get Lard’s car keys.
To hell with Dr. Chu.
28
The day was gray as a low fog marched its fingers over the parking lot, the same type of eerie gloom that crept through vampire novels. Bones shook all over as he climbed into Lard’s seat, which was too laid back, more like taking a nap than controlling hundreds of horsepower. He adjusted the mirror and tugged on the seatbelt. It could have looped around his middle and the steering wheel with room left over for Alice.
Bones fumbled the key into the ignition. He backed out looking over his shoulder, shifted into drive, and watched the hospital shrink behind him. His eyes locked on the road, making all the lights on Jefferson, easing from one lane to the other, from one indistinguishable neighborhood to the next. Billboard after billboard. Huge faces peered down with fake smiles.
Alice should have been beside him, smoking and changing radio stations erratically. Instead How to Shit in the Woods rode shotgun. The odometer ticked off 226,226 like some kind of ominous sign.
At six forty-five, even on a Saturday morning, the streets were awash with commuters. Coffee-drinkers and women putting on makeup. He counted three Kindles propped on dashboards and five guys shaving with electric razors. The Doodle cornered better than his mom’s SUV. It actually dug into the asphalt instead of riding on top of it.
Bones hooked a right at a busy intersection as a big truck whipped by. Relax, he told himself. Try to look like any other guy going to work.
The speed limit on surface streets was forty miles-an-hour. Bones figured he could go fifty without getting stopped, unless a cop was below his monthly ticket quota. He turned at the corner of Figueroa where Felix the Cat towered above a Chevrolet dealership.
Bones drove on knowing he wasn’t alone in being crazed over Alice’s disappearance, also knowing Lard was going to kill him when he found out he stole his car. Grand Theft Auto. That’s what the cops would tell his parents.
He kept checking the rearview mirror, as if Chu’s posse was on his tail. Two blocks later, he pulled into a driveway next to the opera house. It was seven thirty. Breakfast time at the hospital. His stomach growled.
Just a few weeks ago if his body had started eating itself, it would have been some kind of high. He wouldn’t have been able to feel anything else. No pain. Just the bliss of emptiness. Euphoric. It didn’t feel that way this morning.
The fog had some kind of energy to it, like the sun was trying to burn through it. Slowly, the Doodle warmed up. Bones grabbed a bag of Cheese Doodles from Lard’s stash in the trunk and counted out five pieces. Forty-five calories. Time moved slower than usual. The snack lasted an hour.
Bones stared out the window. The parking lot was wide, like there was no end to it. He tried to settle back in the seat, but he couldn’t settle. Not really. The situation was too unsettling. The rush of escaping the hospital twice in two days and the anticipation of seeing Alice began to give way to fears that this was all some cruel dream brought on by drugs slipped into his orange juice.
He watched an elderly couple amble down the sidewalk holding hands. Their clothes matched down to their thick-soled sneakers and golf visors. He’d bet they walked the same route every day, except Sunday, when the Mr. took the Mrs. to IHOP for blueberry waffles.
Cars slowly began filling the parking lot. Dancers—men and women thin as black ice—got out of beaters as old as the Celica. They were quiet and determined in sweats, scarves, knitted caps. All black, like a congress of undertakers. Dance bags drooped fr
om shoulders. Most carried small ice chests. It was obvious they were fiercely serious about the auditions.
Bones searched faces, trying not to panic. Another half hour passed without seeing Alice. He thought about her leaping in the halls at night, dancing in her room during the day, working at it all the time. The only ambition Bones ever had was to blend in. To be invisible. Neutral. Non-reasons for goals. A real goal meant moving toward something, like Alice and her dancing.
Maybe she’d gotten here earlier? Or entered through a different door? Yeah, she was probably backstage right now cutting strips of adhesive tape for her toes. Wrapping satin ribbons around her silky ankles. Warming up with pliés and port de bras.
Bones took another Cheese Doodle from the bag, thinking how different this was from his field trip in the fifth grade when the lot was filled with school buses. He reached around for the M&M’s he’d left on the backseat, bummed that he’d already removed the red ones. Instead he climbed stiffly out of the car into the coolness of the morning and began snaking his way through the parking lot.
The wooden doors were heavier than they looked and rooted like trees. He took longer than necessary with his hand on the knob, suddenly apprehensive that Alice would be mad that he’d followed her.
A gush of cold air hit him in the foyer when he passed a refreshment bar with gilded mirrors. Velvet curtains opened into the theater itself. He stood in one place, blinking until his eyes adjusted, then made his way down the side aisle unnoticed. In the front row, men and women sat in dark suits holding clipboards. With everyone talking at once, Bones wondered how they knew who was saying what.
Piano music trickled in from some unseen place. An old man with a Van Dyke goatee wielded a cane on center stage. The man hollered, “Cue music!”
Bones watched as two dancers appeared like magic from the wings.
The girl moved silent as a shadow, then, suddenly, she seemed to levitate, her pointe shoes barely touching the stage. In one effortless movement, the guy lifted her above his head and they spun in a dizzy circle.
Alice had tried explaining this to him, this exact movement, but seeing it was the only way to fully understand the combination of strength and grace.
Skin and Bones Page 14