Red Water: A Novel
Page 17
His hands are on my back, still shoving, and he’s bending over me and reaching his arms around me, pinching my nipples between strong, cruel fingers. My face is in the mud, skidding into the slimy earth, sludge filling my mouth and eyes. Not this, not like this. He is very strong, so fucking strong, but it doesn’t actually matter how strong he is if I don’t fight back, does it? My only protest is the shocked uh that comes out on my every exhale. But I know it would be no use to tell him this hurts, or to ask him to stop so I can spit the mud out of my mouth. I’m sputtering and trying to breathe, my forearms are scraping against grass and mangrove roots, and he is still slamming into me, his flesh smacking loud against mine with a disgusting slap slap slap, but I asked for this, I wanted him, I wanted him to claim me, didn’t I? Didn’t I want to provoke him? Didn’t I succeed?
And then suddenly, with no warning at all, I’m coming, how the fuck am I coming? This is wrong. There is dirt in my mouth, there is mud in my mouth and I’m coming, and what the fuck is wrong with me? But every nerve ending is shuddering and crashing as if in consort with the waves our commotion has stirred from the once-still water, and I’m spasming and shaking and the water is reddening with the blood of my forearms, and now he’s laughing at me, and now he’s coming too.
Fucker, this fucker, god, did I really want this? Did I enjoy this?
Something is very, very wrong with me.
* * *
Back at his house, he is gentle when he takes me again. We don’t speak. I want him to make me beg again, but I instinctively know that I need to wait and follow his commands. He showers me, washes the mud off and dresses me in one of his T-shirts. I sleep for much of the afternoon, only vaguely registering that I meant to go practice for a couple of hours, that the day is slipping away from me. But I am in his bed and I want to stay here smelling his sheets and lavishing in his generous touch. I’m drunk with submission and I just don’t fucking care.
I stay with him overnight, and the next morning I rush back to my dorm to change into fresh clothes for my lesson with Professor Yarvik. I stop at the bank on campus on the way and deposit the hundred for Liza, but now I will have to busk downtown later this afternoon—I lost the whole day yesterday with Garrett. Anxiety creeps in, pulling at my gut, but I promise myself I can handle this.
During my lesson, my heart skitters and pounds when I try to make my cello sing, and I know something is off, something is not right. It’s this thing with Garrett, I think, but I brush the warning away—I have him and I need to keep him. I’m staring down at my bow, watching it slide over the strings, when I realize that Yarvik is talking to me.
“—going on with you?”
I raise my eyes to hers. “What?”
“You’re very distant today, Malory. Are you okay?”
“I think I’m…I don’t know. Last time I performed I felt…weird.” I can’t explain it to her, how I zoned out playing the Popper during last studio class. Can’t explain about my dead mom. Can’t explain about Garrett. She’d probably think I was crazy.
“I thought something was off with you last time you played. What can we do to bring you back around? Do you want to perform through the feeling, or would you like to talk it out?”
“I don’t think talking will help.” I take a deep breath. That Aspen fellowship, Jesus, I’m going to fuck it up. I have to pull myself together. “I’ll try harder to focus. I might just be having a little trouble adjusting to life at school.”
“Let’s run the Elgar,” she says, her voice flat and disappointed.
The Elgar is better this time, cleaner and more precise, but I am less connected to it. It feels like it’s playing itself. Like I have nothing to do with it at all.
* * *
Downtown is different. I’m angry again, ripping at my strings, moving with my crazy music and crawling my left hand fingers up and down the fingerboard like insects scurrying from light. I play for hours like that, with my eyes closed, switching off my surroundings so that all that’s left is me and my cello and the percussive, frenetic music we create together. It’s like drowning, except music is breathable.
After I don’t know how many minutes of slipping down that musical rabbit hole, I finally open my eyes, and there’s Garrett, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, just like yesterday in the woods. He is staring at me with that same knowing look, and my heart expands in my chest, violent with desire. Or…not outright desire—more like desire for him to desire me, and that naked want is far more erotic than ordinary one-directional lust. I’m pulsing between my legs already, imagining him grabbing me and throwing me down, hurting me. My forearms throb a little at the thought, but the scrapes on my arms were not so bad as I had feared. They’re scabbed over already.
I look down at my cello case. Holy shit. It’s filled with cash.
Garrett comes to me, relaxed but purposeful, his expression indeterminate. “Meet me at my house, okay?” It is not really a question.
I bite my lip at him, and the self-satisfied smile he gives me tells me he knows I mean yes.
* * *
At his house, this time prepared with a change of clothes for tomorrow, I eat another incredible meal—salmon, roasted peppers, quinoa with parsley and tomatoes and some other flavors I can’t name. I know feeding me well is his way of showing he cares.
When we’ve almost finished with dinner, he puts his fork down and says, “Your playing today…”
I look up from my food, wipe my mouth with my napkin. I’m shivering, as always, despite the cardigan I’m wearing over my dress.
“Why so savage?” he asks.
My chest flushes. “Was it savage?” Of course it was. “I mean, I don’t know. I just play whatever comes out, I think.”
“Is it because of me?”
My pulse is whomping so loud in my head I can barely hear him. “I…think it might’ve been, yes.”
He is quiet for a minute, contemplating me. “I like very much that it’s for me,” he says.
My flush deepens, my ears burning to the point of pain. I’m glad he liked it. “I…I didn’t know you were there,” I say. “I’m embarrassed you heard.”
“I want you to play like that only for me.”
I lick my lips and swallow over the knot that has risen to my throat. “You mean—”
“I mean, do not let other people hear you play that way. I want it to be just for me.” He’s sitting stock-still, his hand resting on the table next to his fork.
“But…I made a lot of money tonight playing like that.” I think of Liza, of how much I could help her. How much I could help myself. I feel possessive now, of both my playing and the money I earn from it.
“Well, you’re free to do what you want, aren’t you?” He shrugs.
His tone, though. Somehow his talking about freedom feels like a noose tightening around my neck. “I like the idea of only playing like that for you. It’s just…I don’t understand. I mean, you liked it? Is that why?”
“Everyone liked it. You couldn’t have been more seductive if you had stripped your clothes off and spread your legs for them.” His nostrils flare a little, as if he is aroused—or angered—by the image.
I look down at my hands, start pushing at my cuticles. I’m afraid to move, afraid to defy him, but I’m pulsing between my legs again, the wetness seeping out of me and drenching my underwear. He’s waiting for a response, I think, watching as my breath rushes away from me. But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to make of being bossed around because I’m too desirable. Seductive, supposedly.
He stands abruptly to gather our plates. I help him wash and dry the dishes and stow everything back in his worn but immaculate cabinets. I wipe the countertops, the stove, the table. I’m still shivering, but I like how ordered I feel just being here, where everything is in its place.
In his bedroom, he makes me drop to my hands and knees on the floor.
“Put your chest down so your ass in is in the air,” he sa
ys, and I do it, and then he says, “Now spread it and show me everything.”
Then: “Make yourself come.”
It takes me a long time. I couldn’t do it the last time, maybe too shy to get into it, too bound by dignity to let go. But this time I close my eyes and picture that first date when he pulled my dress down and pinned my arms by my sides, how he finger-fucked me on the counter, how I’d never felt so exposed in my entire life. I think of how he barely touched me that day with the manatees, how I stood bare-breasted before him and he gazed into my eyes, chastely, respectfully, while I was the one who secretly hoped he’d fuck me. And then I see myself at the water’s edge, my face pushed into the mud, Garrett pounding me and pinching my nipples and scraping my arms in the mangrove roots, making me come when I could have sworn I didn’t want it. It’s not as if I have any dignity left; what’s the point of pretending?
My breath hitches and squeaks, and then I’m making myself moan, giving over to my own hand, pushing two and then three fingers into myself and he’s saying “You’re a dirty little whore, aren’t you?” And I’m liking it, god, what the fuck is wrong with me? My knees bang hard into the wood floor as I squirm and rock against myself, Garrett encouraging me: “Only a whore would play like that in the streets for all to see.” He’s right. It really was like I’d spread my legs for those people, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I move my hand faster and faster and Garrett says, “You and your wet, hungry cunt, you like it like this, don’t you?” and then I’m coming around my own fingers, shuddering and groaning, and fuck, I don’t think I’m supposed to get off on this. But I am.
He pulls me up and guides my face to his penis, and I suck him, ravage him, run my hands all over his washboard stomach and claw at his backside until he comes into my mouth. And this time, though the taste is vile, I swallow, because I know there is no point in resisting. He keeps his hands off my head—he trusts me now.
Chapter Twenty
I am a permanent fixture at Garrett’s house each night, from late evening to dawn. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we rise ahead of the sun and run, and he works my muscles like before, as cold and businesslike as ever. I love him these mornings, when he is predictable—when I can follow his directives with unhesitating compliance. But I love him even more when he is unpredictable, when the frissons of excitement crawl over my skin as I try to guess what he’ll ask me to do next. Sometimes he hurts me, like at the river; sometimes he scares me, but it’s not nearly as scary as the thought of being without him. I try my best to please him, but when I don’t, it’s okay because the rougher he is, the more alive I feel.
Thursday morning I’m in my practice room early, a good cello student, freshly showered after my run with Garrett, when Bethany knocks on my door.
“Hey there, stranger!” she says, and she is so perky and innocent that she barely makes sense to me. I imagine how flustered and pink she’d be if she knew the shit Garrett did to me last night.
“Am I a stranger? I’ve been here every morning. Well, except yesterday.” Yesterday I stayed with Garrett in the morning because he wanted me to strip naked in front of his open front window and get myself off while he called me a filthy little slut and accused me of liking it. It took me a whole two minutes to come. I really am a filthy slut.
“I guess that’s true,” Bethany says.
“What?” Is she calling me a slut?
“Like you said, you’ve been here most days. Guess I just missed you yesterday.”
She’s leaning on the doorframe now, staring at the ceiling while she tangles and untangles her fingers, and I think, She knows absolutely nothing about me.
“What are you playing in studio today?” she asks.
“Popper.”
“The same one as last week?”
“A new one.”
“Wow. You want me to listen?”
I shrug. It doesn’t matter.
She hesitates and fiddles with the doorknob. “Would you mind listening to me, though? I have the second movement of the Schubert…”
“Sure.”
She plays for me, and I smile and nod and tell her what is good and what is bad. I’m acting pretty normal, really, even though inside I’m heaving and burping like a forgotten pot of sauce on the stove. I can pull off normal.
But that afternoon in the study lounge, Rome is either more perceptive than Bethany or less willing to keep his mouth shut.
“You’ve got some bitchin’ bags under your eyes, girl.”
I widen my eyes at him, like, And?
“Daphne told me you never sleep at the dorm anymore.”
“None of your business where I sleep, Rome.” I’m absorbed in Hitler’s Obersalzberg Speech, thinking how Hitler’s arrogance reminds me quite a lot of Garrett’s confidence, his steadfastness. Will Garrett eventually clear me out, carve some lebensraum—living space—for himself out of the space I once inhabited? I picture him digging into me, breaking me apart with a spade and turning clumps of me over and over, tilling me until he reveals the rich, palpitating underbelly of my aliveness, like I am a tract of earth and he is preparing to sow himself beneath my skin.
“You can try to play cool with me,” Rome says, “but I know that guy, okay? I met him at the beginning of the summer, way before you got here, yes, because we both sell dope. He’s a fucking psycho, and let me tell you, girl, you are not the first.”
I think I’m going to slam my book shut and walk away, but instead I picture myself with my face in the mud, my mouth full of black sediment, and this time instead of getting turned on, my eyes burn. And now I’m crying, well isn’t that just fucking awesome, we’re in the study lounge where anyone could walk in and I’m sitting here with tears running down my fucking face.
“Fuck, Mal, don’t do that. Jesus Christ, I wanna fucking kill this asshole.”
“But I love him. I love him. I know he’s not perfect, but I love him.” Wow, I’m the biggest blubbering idiot who ever lived.
Rome closes his book and looks hard at me. “That’s not love, girl, come on, you gotta know this. You gotta know that’s not what love looks like.”
“It’s what love looks like to me,” I say defensively, but that’s not quite true. The idea of Garrett wanting me makes me feel worthy. Worthy of what, I’m not sure, but who wouldn’t want to be desired by someone with such…militant control over their emotions? How could it not flatter me that I am sometimes the stimulus for Garrett’s occasional lapses in restraint? I look around to make sure we’re still the only ones in the study lounge, and though I confirm we are alone, I lower my voice to almost a whisper: “I can’t explain it, Rome, he just—he’s so clean and perfect and beautiful, and he makes me feel alive.”
“Girl, you were alive before,” he says in that sweet, matter-of-fact way of his.
And I cry harder, because, no, I wasn’t alive before. All the years my mother was wasting away, I wasted away with her, and when she went under the water, I went under with her. I’ve been living life from under water, and my goals, my grades, my cello, were a thin, hollow reed sticking up above the surface, funneling barely enough air into my lungs to keep me from drowning. Liza wanted to kill my father; I wanted to die with my mother.
“So,” Rome says, “did you hear about the two antennas that got married?”
“Huh?” I look up, sniffling.
“The ceremony was so-so, but the reception was amazing.”
I crack a smile, though my eyes are full of tears. “You’re a dork.”
“Made you smile,” he says, leaning back and opening his book up again. “And that’s really all I wanted.”
* * *
It’s Halloween night and, unbelievably, Garrett is coming out with me, Daphne, and Bethany to a costume party. When I asked him if he wanted to go, I was sure he would say no. But he suits up and sticks a cigar in his mouth and totes a fake machine gun—he’s a gangster, of course he is, so smooth, that bastard, and I’m dressed as Wednesday Addams because
my black hair is perfect for the costume and I’m in the mood to stare at people like my soul is dead.
Daphne dresses up as Tinkerbell, and Bethany is all in black, with black lipstick—she says she’s a moody teenager. We laugh at our similar themes and how different Daphne’s is. Daphne is adorable in her little green tutu though, even if she’s too damn skinny. I message costume pictures to Liza and she does the same; she’s hanging out with that nice friend from the musical, and they’re dressed as flappers with costumes they snuck from the school wardrobe.
Garrett brings another friend I haven’t met, a good-looking, sandy-haired guy who I assume must sell either insurance or weed. He seems like he’s looking for a hookup, though I can instantly tell he is not interested in Bethany, and I know for sure that Daphne is not interested in him. I take a sick amount of joy in watching him attempt to flirt with her while she rolls her eyes at him. Tonight I’m not the only one dangling from the cliff of rejection.
The party is across the street from the music school on the top floor of an apartment building. Everyone’s dressed up, and the music is appropriately spooky but still dance-friendly. I feel upbeat tonight, still in disbelief that Garrett has come out with me. He even dances with me for a few songs, his hands coming to my waist in a glorious show of possession: She’s mine, I’m with her. Rome watches us warily from the sidelines. I can tell he disapproves of my happiness with Garrett, and I want to prove him wrong—I want him to know that I am the girl, that I am enough to keep Garrett’s interest. I bet that before me, Garrett didn’t take his other girlfriends out to parties.