Robin and Ruby

by K. M. Soehnlein

  Ruby squints to read the time.

  “Ten thirty-five,” Wendy tells her. “Have you been to Club Excess?”

  “I don’t really know this area,” Ruby says.

  “It’s the only club in Seaside that plays new wave.”

  Ruby says, “I like new wave,” and Wendy immediately barrages her with the names of bands. “Do you like Siouxsie and the Banshees? Depeche Mode? OMD? The Smiths?” Ruby nods and nods again. They all agree that they liked INXS better before they sold out.

  Joanne says, “Tonight is Ladies’ Night. No cover for girls before eleven. Are you here with your girlfriends? Do you want to bring them along?”

  “No, I came down here with my boyfriend.” A pinch of guilt catches in Ruby’s throat. She pictures Calvin back at the house, glowering in a corner, while Benjamin gossips that she went out looking for Chris, and Alice says mean things about her. Can she blame them? What kind of girl kisses a guy behind her boyfriend’s back, then disappears without explanation? All along she’s imagined that Calvin is wrong for her, but maybe it’s the other way around.

  Joanne asks, “Are you waiting for him?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m going to break up with him.” She hasn’t spoken these words out loud until now, but she finds them very easy to say. She adds, “Actually, I’m trying to find this other guy.” She tells them about seeing Chris at the party, how he kissed her before she remembered who he was, how she set out into the night, tracking him blindly. She describes what he looks like, his clothes, asks if they’ve seen him.

  “He sounds cute,” Joanne says.

  “Totally,” Wendy adds. “Maybe he went to Excess. You should come!”

  “Maybe I should hang out here. What if he shows up?”

  Wendy purses her lips, which has the effect of elongating her snake-like face even more. “I wouldn’t stay here by myself. Every summer, like five or six girls get raped.”

  She hands the nail file back to Ruby, who imagines stabbing it into the neck of the creepy guy who had sent her fleeing to the ladies’ room. “Watch out, rapists,” she says softly.

  “We can help you look for him,” Joanne says. “It’ll be fun.”

  Wendy nods along with Joanne. Ruby looks at them and thinks of her mother—of Dorothy’s disapproval at the idea of Ruby tagging along with Jersey girls to a bar down the shore to look for a boy she hardly knows.

  “Why not?” Ruby says. She pushes her thermos toward them. “Here, help me finish this.”

  Ruby’s fake ID makes the claim that she’s twenty-two and a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. It’s still legal for her to drink in New York, but it’s only a matter of time until the age gets raised there, like it is here, in New Jersey, to twenty-one. All those Mothers Against Drunk Driving are slowly but surely making their case to legislators. She bought the ID last year at a place Robin knew about in Times Square called Playland. When he came home for Thanksgiving, he took her there—a crammed, scuzzy arcade just down from the dirty movie theaters on 42nd Street. He warned her, “Every bartender on the East Coast knows about Playland, but for some of them, it’s good enough. They just want you to show something.” She had parroted Robin’s words to Calvin after he mocked the crude, laminated card she showed him. But eventually Calvin went to Times Square for one of his own.

  Wendy uses her sister’s cast-off driver’s license. “We look alike, so it works,” she says. Joanne, it turns out, is twenty-four, which is a surprise. She certainly doesn’t act five years older than Ruby.

  “You’ll be fine,” Wendy assures her. “Just flirt with the door guy.”

  They wait outside of Club XS—not “Excess,” just the letters—behind two fair-haired girls in bikini tops and cut-offs, who are sent away by a bouncer with a ZZ Top beard because they don’t have ID. The bouncer frowns when he sees what Ruby has presented him. He stares her up and down. It’s probably in her favor that she’s wearing Dorian’s clean, preppie clothes—she doesn’t look like someone who’ll cause trouble—and that she’s with an older girl like Joanne, though what seems to tip the balance is Ruby saying, in her sultriest voice, “I had so much fun here last time, I totally had to come back.”

  “You better behave yourself,” he says, and lets her past.

  She’s only been in one nightclub in Manhattan—the Palladium, a huge place so saturated with attitude and high fashion that she was reduced to slinking around like a child at a grown-ups’ party. Walking into XS isn’t like that at all. The entry, where she pays the price of admission, is dark, and she has to push aside a black curtain, beyond which a big room opens up: two floors, one with a balcony looking down on the other. A DJ hovers over the dance floor from the upper level. She follows Joanne and Wendy into the crowded room thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of spilled beer. The bar is a kind of horseshoe off to one side, surrounded by a field of impatient faces. It’s a mostly new-wave crowd, though she sees plenty of the same people she saw on the boardwalk: the guys with the thick necks, the girls with their boobs pushed up and out. If Chris is here, it won’t take long to find him.

  The dance floor is already full. A lighting board on the ceiling spits colored beams across gyrating bodies. The density of the crowd is overwhelming, the vibe not very friendly, but the music is good, and she feels some sense of relief to be with these two girls, who are treating her like someone they’ve known for more than just the last hour.

  Joanne buys her a drink called Sex on the Beach, sweet and strong. They clink glasses. “Here’s to Ladies’ Night,” Joanne says, lifting her arms in the air with a whoop. The liquid slips down Ruby’s throat way too fast.

  Wendy yanks her by the elbow, nodding toward the bathroom, where she reapplies her makeup and warns her about Joanne. “We can’t let her drink too much. She has to drive me home, and she can’t handle her liquor. You don’t have a car, do you?”

  Ruby shakes her head. “Even if I did, I’m not sure I can handle my liquor, either.”

  “Great.” Wendy’s face elongates once again, her lips puckered, her chin poking upward. “Won’t be the first time I had to sleep on the beach.”

  “You can probably stay with me at Alice’s.”

  “Really?” Wendy’s face brightens. “Good, because I hate getting sand in my panties.”

  Ruby realizes she has no idea how the sleeping arrangements at Alice’s are supposed to work. Calvin had promised her a room to sleep in—a promise he can’t possibly keep. She’d only noticed a couple of bedrooms in the house, and by now there are probably people doing it in each of them, or passed out from drinking. There may not even be a clean stretch of carpeting to claim, with all the beer spills and crushed potato chips and sand dragged in from outside.

  Wendy asks her where she is from and seems stunned by the news that Ruby lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, that she goes to Barnard. “I could tell you went to college,” Wendy says, in a tone that seems to indicate some regret.

  “I haven’t decided on a major. I’m taking a lot of women’s studies classes.”

  “I’m getting my cosmetology license,” Wendy says.

  “Really? That’s so great.”

  Wendy frowns. “Actually, it is.”

  “No, I mean it,” Ruby says, wanting to close whatever gap this conversation has opened. “What am I going to do with a liberal arts degree?”

  “I have a cousin who works on commercials in Hollywood. She can get me a job doing makeup for TV stars.” Wendy pulls a tube of lipstick from her purse and stands in front of the mirror. She expertly swipes a bloodred streak once, twice, three times. Then she sticks her index finger in her mouth and pulls it out through closed lips, explaining, “Keeps it off my teeth.”

  “Can I?” Ruby asks.

  Wendy hands her the tube. “Vampire’s Kiss.”

  Back in the bar, Joanne squeals, “Where have you been?” and drags them onto the dance floor. Ruby sucks down her fruity cocktail and drops the glass on a table, w
here it falls on its side and sends ice across the tabletop. “Sorry,” she yells at the girls who are sitting there. I’m a little drunk, she thinks. I’m not myself.

  Under the shifting lighting, among the bodies, Ruby forgets she’s a sometimes-awkward dancer and lets herself sway, her fists out in front as if gripping a grocery cart. It doesn’t take long for her arms to limber up, for her feet to come unglued and find the beat. She used to dance with Robin at home, in the kitchen, listening to his favorite pop radio station, teasing him that his taste was corny but having fun anyway. She pirouettes, and her purse, weighed down by the thermos, bangs her hipbone. She drops the purse on the dance floor, as Joanne has done with her own bag.

  “You’re so cute!” Joanne shouts to her between pulls on her cocktail straw. Wendy leans toward Joanne’s ear, no doubt warning her about her drinking, but Joanne waves her off. “We just got here! Cut loose, baby!” The message isn’t much different from Alice’s “Loosen up,” but the intent is a world apart.

  Ruby loses herself in the music, singing along when she knows the words, rolling her head with her eyes closed when she doesn’t. The last blast of liquor has ignited a kind of aura around her, a warm force field of light and sound. One song shifts into another—this is one she adores, A Flock of Seagulls’ “Space Age Love Song.” It progresses at the same dreamy, yearning pace as the alcohol in her blood. It’s exactly the right rhythm, exactly the right song, she can forget everything and simply ride a wave of sonic longing. I saw your eyes, and it made me smile, and in a little while, I was falling in love. The long unlikely day compresses itself into a contained, knowable moment, outside time—gone are the hostilities at Alice’s house and the anxiety of being alone on the boardwalk amid thousands of strange faces. Here now is something private and nearly abstract, outside of logic but complete, whole. Like a dream. She forgets about her search, forgets her driving need for meaning. Maybe all that this weekend is “meant to be” is an escapade, a chance to meet new friends, to cut loose. Maybe the only reason she’s been brought here is to wind up on this dance floor, in this little square all of her own.

  She opens her eyes. Looks around. And then she sees them, and the trance is shattered.

  Alice. Dorian. Cicely. Benjamin, with that fucking necktie wrapped around his head again! That other guy, Fuckin’-Nick-and-Shit. They are several yards away, elbowing a path to the floor. Their antics are too big, every gesture demanding extra space from the strangers in their way. They don’t know this is a sanctuary you have to give yourself over to slowly. They are behaving like this is just one more place to claim for their own.

  She almost stops dancing. Thinks of fleeing. Then Benjamin notices her. His eyes move from recognition to excitement and then narrow into a particular expression, a gotcha. In his gaze she feels accused—for ditching Calvin (who must be with them, maybe up at the bar, ordering drinks), and also for something greater. For being here without them. Replacing them with other people. She was supposed to belong to them, to be their toy. But, see, she has discarded them.

  Benjamin continues to appraise her as he shuffles closer. He looks down at her fantastic legs and leers.

  When their eyes meet, she mouths, “What?” with just enough challenge to let him know this is not his moment.

  He slithers over, arms in front, crotch thrusting, enveloping her like a crab, snapping her up in his pincers.

  The benefit of having consumed so much alcohol is that she can let this happen without losing her nerve. Without letting him win, either. She can swivel around and shake her ass and act like she doesn’t owe him any explanation at all. He can move in too close and she can handle it.

  She sees Wendy and Joanne looking her way, gossiping behind their drinks.

  Now Alice is near, pointing at Ruby and shouting—“I am so totally sure!”—so tall and so pale she’s like a translucent apparition. Dorian is right behind her, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Ruby cocks her head away from them, lifts her eyebrows. A challenge. She has decided to enjoy this. She is going to astonish them all.

  Hands in the air, she backs up into Benjamin, who’s got her by the hips, his own hips gyrating across her ass, thrusting like she saw him do on the bed with Dorian. Humping like a puppy—it makes her laugh, him thinking he’s got something on her when in fact she’s letting him do this, she’s the one in charge, and in a minute she’s going to walk away and not look back.

  She’s never had a moment like this before in her life.

  The music switches: Would I lie to you, would I lie to you, honey?

  Dorian pushes past Alice and plants herself directly in front of Ruby. Dorian is standing in place, but having trouble staying upright, her face is a drunken smear around a furious set of eyes. Ruby sees indignation inside that fury, directed at her. Because she’s dancing with Benjamin?

  Dorian points a finger at her. She shouts, “That’s my—” and Ruby expects “boyfriend,” but Dorian screeches, “clothes!” And then she lunges.

  Ruby’s sensation of control shatters like window glass, shards raining down. Time roars back, asserting its power—igniting a sequence of rapid, raging action that she can barely keep up with. Dorian is clawing Ruby’s shirt and shorts—her own clothes—as though she’d rather tear them to shreds than see Ruby in them one more minute. Ruby tumbles backward into Benjamin and then the three of them are going down, Benjamin collapsing from unsteady feet, Ruby bracing herself as Dorian swipes blindly and tumbles onto her. Ruby feels a fingernail score her neck. She swats blindly, defending against Dorian, who unleashes a spray of invective, “Fucking virgin in my clothes, fucking bitch,” dousing Ruby in spittle. Ruby grunts as she hits the floor. Her hip slams down on the metal thermos. She remembers that nail file in her purse and wishes she could stick it through Dorian’s skin.

  Benjamin is yelling from beneath them; it just sounds like noise. And then there’s someone else descending into the huddle, trying to pull Dorian off Ruby but losing her footing and falling into the mess as well. It’s Joanne.

  The fierceness on Joanne’s face is a revelation. She’s a lioness, Ruby her cub. Joanne’s fingers snatch at Dorian’s hair. Dorian’s scream is like an arrow piercing Ruby’s ear.

  Then someone is yanking Ruby from the dog pile—ungentle hands taking her up and away. A force so sudden she’s not even sure what’s happening, who’s behind it.

  “You’re outta here,” shouts a man she’s never seen before. She blinks to clear her vision, steadies herself on her feet, but he’s got her by the arm and is pulling. He’s got Dorian in his grasp, too. Dorian is wiping her face with such a frenzy she looks like she might erase her own features. A moan escapes from her.

  The bouncer shoves Dorian in front of him and pulls Ruby behind, and like this he wrangles them through the crowd. Faces painted black-and-white gawk at her. There among them is Calvin—he registers Ruby’s presence, and she has to look away. She wants to tell him, this isn’t my fault. But she’s pulled quickly past him and out the front door.

  The air is cold against her clammy skin. She touches a finger to her neck, there’s a spot of blood there from Dorian’s assault. She waves her hand at Dorian. “You did this!”

  The bouncer slaps her arm down roughly.

  The sidewalk in front of the club fills with raised voices and accusations, as a second bouncer, the one with the enormous beard, emerges with Joanne in his grasp—she looks absolutely intent on doing damage to anything in her path. She spots Dorian and yells, “Come on, bitch, finish what you started.”

  “I don’t even know you,” Dorian slurs. With an arm flapping at Ruby, she says, “It’s this one.”

  “What did I ever do to you?” Ruby shouts.

  “You don’t fool me,” Dorian hisses.

  She said something like this earlier, too, Ruby realizes. If she wasn’t so furious, if she wasn’t the center of all this unwelcome attention, she would ask Dorian what the hell she means.

  The rest of them are there—Alice
and her gang circling around, Benjamin looking completely entertained, Wendy getting as close to Joanne as the bouncer will allow and urging, “Take a pill, Joanne, take a big fat chill pill.”

  And Calvin is there. He’s trying to get the bouncers’ attention, as if he alone can negotiate this mess. “Step back, kid,” the bearded one commands.

  Calvin points to Ruby. “That’s my girlfriend.” She looks away from him as if from an accusation.

  It won’t be hard to break up with him now, she thinks. He’ll welcome it. I’ve shamed him.

  She’s not going to let herself cry, though she feels tears forming, intent on release. A wall of swelling, swirling pressure behind her eyes, in her nose, her throat. Her skin throbs in half a dozen spots. She again touches the scratch on her neck. She looks to her purse for a tissue—but she doesn’t have her purse.

  The big bouncer who pulled Ruby off the dance floor is shouting, “I will call the cops, unless all-a yous calm the fuck down!”

  “Call the cops on this one,” Joanne shouts, pointing at Dorian.

  Ruby thinks it must be clear to everyone that Dorian is to blame for the melee—she’s the drunkest, looks the craziest—but Joanne’s roaring cat-face has ignited a rally behind Dorian.

  “You’re making it worse,” Alice snaps at Joanne.

  “Now you wanna start with me?”

  “Does anyone even know her?” Alice asks.

  “I know her,” Ruby says.

  “You do?”

  “Dorian was scratching my eyes out,” Ruby says, “and none of you did anything about it!” From somewhere she’s found this rage. Alice must sense it, too—she turns away without another word—and Ruby realizes she’s disappointed her, that Alice will never really accept her as Calvin’s girlfriend after this.

  “I want my clothes back!” Dorian shrieks.