“Shit Faced ‘R’ Us,” agreed Chloe.
They straggled outside. It was always disorienting to find yourself on the sidewalk in the darkness, with the city coming at you from all different directions, and even Jack, who had been cautious about his drinking, took a moment to get his bearings. Chloe and Dex were giggling and holding hands as he led them to the car. There were some real advantages to being gay, he decided.
“Where to?” Jack asked, once he was behind the wheel. As if he didn’t know exactly where Chloe lived. They gave him directions back to Evanston. Chloe was in the front seat but she kept turning around to talk to Dex. She both was and was not sitting next to him. If only Dex boy would get himself dropped off first.
Praise the Lord. Dex said, “Take a left here and go down to the end of the block. See that light? That’s it. My man Jack. Chloe darlin’.” He made a couple of passes at opening the car door but couldn’t figure out how the handle worked.
“Are you gonna be all right?” Chloe asked, concerned.
“Tip-top.”
“Because I could come in if you need me to.”
Jack gritted his teeth and prayed a small, ugly prayer. Dex gave the door handle another whack and it popped open. “Le voilà.”
“Good night, then.” Jack waited until Dex got himself out on the sidewalk, gave him the big wave, and sped off. “Why does he dress like that?” he ventured.
“He thinks it’s funny.”
“I guess it’s a grad student thing.”
“I guess.”
Without a third person in the car, she seemed to be receding from him. “Where am I going?” Jack asked after a space of silence.
“Oh, sorry. Go down to Ridge, turn right, then straight for a while.”
For all Jack knew, she’d already planned her exit strategy, had it all timed down to the second how she was going to escape him. He wasn’t going to push anything, he decided. Wasn’t even going to ask for her phone number. He knew the damned number, he was just going to wait a couple of days, then call. He was already practicing his own good-night speech, how he was glad to see her again, maybe something else about the class, or even about poetry, nah, deadly. He pulled up in front of her apartment building, on one of those tidy, tree-lined streets that were thought to be beyond the reach of students. “Come on in for a little if you want,” Chloe said, and let herself out of the car without waiting for his answer.
“Can I park here?” he managed, and she said over her shoulder that he could. She was up her front steps and had her keys out while Jack was still trying to get one stumbling foot in front of the other.
The door was standing open when he approached it across the wooden porch. It was one of those old frame houses that had been divided into apartments. He registered antique details like carved fretwork and white wood trellises supporting the remnants of last summer’s vines. “Hey, Chloe?”
A narrow entry hall, and a room beyond it, both empty. He heard a toilet flushing, stopped where he was.
She came out still tugging at her clothes; Jack looked away. “Come on in. You want a beer? Oh never mind, I don’t have any.”
“That’s okay. Really.”
She sat down on the couch and after a moment of stupid hesitation, Jack closed the front door and sat down next to her. It was a small room and there wasn’t anywhere else to sit or anything else to do with himself. Everything was middle-of-the-night quiet, except for an occasional car passing outside. The couch was low and soft and just sitting on it made them sink toward each other. Jack tried to lift himself up, discreetly put some space between their hips. He was afraid she was going to come to herself, realize she didn’t know him, start screaming and slapping him away.
But she only said, “You don’t talk a lot, do you.”
“Oh, once you get to know me, I’m a babbling brook.”
She looked up at him, a touch of a frown between her eyes. He had the disconcerting impression that from moment to moment, she actually did forget who he was. If he leaned back slightly, he could see down her shirt. He was attempting to disassociate from his body, will it into dullness. Should he start talking, was that what she wanted? “So where are you from?” he began.
“You know that guy I was talking about, my ex?”
She waited until he said yes, he did, and still she looked at him suspiciously, as if he’d said something wrong.
“I wasn’t going to marry him because he was rich. That was totally, totally not important.”
“Of course not.”
Again, that look of heavy disbelief. She was on the edge of a quarrelsome drunkenness and anything he’d say would be a mistake and he was something other than sober himself. He shut his fool mouth.
“It started off perfect. It was perfect for the longest time. Is that supposed to be bad? Is it some kind of tip-off? Hey, I didn’t know that, I just thought it was all perfect. Sex too. You mind if I say that? Or I guess I already did.”
She was arching her back, trying to get herself turned around to face him, and here was one leg in its black leather boot wriggling open so he could see without effort up the length of her blue-jeaned thigh. “It’s okay.”
“Then all of a sudden, or no, not sudden, more like a faucet that starts to drip. There’s all these things wrong with me. I laugh too much and it gets on his nerves. I was taking these elitist classes. I spent too much time with my friends and they were elitists too, and what did I do to my hair, it looked like crap, and I better let him drive because I was such a lousy driver. Get the picture? When I’d ask him what was going on, what was the matter, he’d say, Nothing. I was just overly sensitive.”
“Well good riddance. He sounds like a tear-down artist. Somebody who was just so insecure and threatened—”
“Yeah, I know how it works.”
“Sure. I’m sure you—”
“Everybody thinks if you talk about something enough you can make it go away. Therapy is such a total, total … Oh, goddamn him. Know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna write a poem about him that’ll clean his clock. A hate poem instead of a love poem. Can you do that?”
“I’m pretty sure you can.”
“Forget it. A poem. He’d laugh his ass off. Steal his money. That’s what gets to guys like him.”
“We can do that,” said Jack loyally. Robbery didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to consider.
“Great. Steal it all.”
“Or you could just write him off. Move on. You know, living well is the best revenge. Have a little fun. If there’s things you like to do for fun. So are there?”
Silence. Her eyes had closed, she had fallen off the edge of drunkenness and into sleep. As quietly as he could, he eased himself off the couch and made his way to the bathroom. The combination of desire and having to piss made him hobble.
She was still asleep, passed out, maybe, when he returned. Jack looked around him, tried to fathom something from her books and pictures, but he felt as circumspect as if he was in a doctor’s waiting room. He supposed he should leave, get himself home, call her later and hope she remembered him in some vaguely positive way. He knelt down in front of her. “Chloe?”
She didn’t stir. Her lips were parted and a tiny whistle of breath drew in and out. Her forehead was damp and her hair clung to it. Jack reached out and with the tip of one finger touched a strand of it.
Her eyes opened. Blue floodlights. The lids drooped but she focused in on him and said, “What?”
He drew his hand back. “You okay?”
“Sick.”
Her skin was pale and sweated and Jack thought she might throw up. That didn’t seem disgusting to him, rather, almost a kind of intimacy. “Can I get you anything?”
“Water.”
“Hold on.” He went into the kitchen and ran water into a glass, found two frozen-solid ice-cube trays in the freezer, forget it, hustled back to her. It amazed him that he was here at all, much less that she might turn to him for any sort of help, that
there was anything in him she might find of use or value. “Here you go,” he said, offering the glass.
She spilled a little but got it down. “God, I’m a mess.” She sounded both more sober and more distressed.
“Nah. You’re just kind of drunk and on the way down.”
“I’ve been whining all night. Sorry.”
“A shoulder to puke on. Everybody needs one.”
“Please don’t say puke.”
They laughed at that. It was a relief to laugh in this weary, comradely fashion. Jack was thinking it was turning out all right. They would be buddies, or at least start off that way. In his mind he was already working it out, how they would get to know each other, the way that might progress. He was still leaning over her when she reached up with both arms and although he had not planned or foreseen it, they were kissing.
They staggered, trying to find a balance. Then Chloe pulled him down on top of her. He landed with his knees on either side of her, still in danger of falling over completely while she was rising up to meet him. He put one arm around her shoulders, which were thin and tense, tasted the inside of her mouth, still cool even through the alcohol bitterness, and then it no longer mattered what he had or hadn’t planned, he wanted her.
They kissed for a time, until that began to seem unsatisfactory. Jack tried to work her shirt loose. She allowed this, and allowed his hand to burrow beneath the fabric to reach her breast in a way he hoped did not seem entirely desperate and adolescent. Everything was happening in a blurred, hasty fashion, with too much clothing and furniture in the way. Their weight sank into the couch even as he got her shirt open and groped around at her waistband. She allowed this also, she seemed cooperative, if not enthusiastic, in a way he didn’t want to admit was faintly disappointing. It was difficult to get her jeans slid over her hips, he didn’t want to think about those damn boots, but he finally managed it all, pulled her panties down too and cupped his hand over her pubic hair, his fingers exploring and prodding. She put her hand on top of his and bore down hard.
It was what he’d been waiting for. He wanted to be inside her that instant. They were going to have to get up and find the bedroom, or at least stand to get rid of the last of their clothes, or maybe he could manage to get himself out and open her legs enough to enter her. That was what he was attempting to do when she said in an unnatural, high-pitched voice, “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” and pushed him away.
He stared at her, confounded. She shrank back and tried to cover herself. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I’m really really sorry.”
Jack had stopped himself, in some conscious sense, but his penis hadn’t gotten the message and was still straining to get at her, dragging the rest of his body along with it. She rolled away from him; one of her boot heels caught him in the ribs. “I mean it.”
“Jesus Christ.” He managed to get himself untangled from her, sat down on one end of the couch. “What the hell’s the matter?”
“I know this is crummy, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you said that.” He could hardly believe what was happening, that it wasn’t a bad joke, or a notion he could talk her out of. “Wasn’t this all your idea, did I miss something?”
“I know, I thought I could, I wanted to, but I can’t.”
“‘Can’t,’ what’s that supposed to mean?”
Her head drooped. “Can’t.” Very quiet.
She sniffled, but Jack wasn’t buying it, wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for her. He sat glumly. She said, “It doesn’t have anything to do with you—”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean I’m a horrible messed-up person. I’m completely toxic to be around.”
“Well you could have told me that up front. That you were a total flake.” He was angry and humiliated, he didn’t care what he said.
“I’m just not … really in my body right now.”
She sounded wistful, even a little puzzled. Jack dismissed it as more theatrics. “Sure, I get it. Nobody’s home.”
“I don’t blame you for being mad. I absolutely understand that.”
He didn’t want to be understood, at least not by her at this moment. “I have to go.” He got to his feet. She had pulled her pants back up; her shirt was still open and her bra straps were down around her elbows. Although she was sitting up primly, one small breast stared back at him, its nipple a blind eye.
“Please don’t feel like this is anybody’s fault but mine. I mean you seem like a really nice person,” she offered.
“Yeah, you did too.” He picked up his coat without putting it on, got himself outside, and made that car go. He drove and drove, sped down the empty streets, jammed his brakes, daring the cops or anybody else to get in his way so that he could wind up in some genuine trouble, but that seemed as stupid and sad as everything else that had happened, and finally, after a trip to the lakeshore, where there was nothing to do with the thick gray cold water except throw yourself in, or decide not to, he simply went home.
He woke the next morning feeling a complicated shame, both for himself and for her. When he was able to think more coolly, he computed the amount of alcohol involved and soberly—that was the word—was almost grateful nothing more had happened. She had been drunk, and although he knew that girls sometimes got drunk so that they could permit themselves to have sex, he didn’t want to imagine how things might have gone if she’d had her second thoughts a few minutes later. She might even have called the police, had him arrested for rape, and he would have had a hard time trying to get anyone to believe otherwise. Things like that happened, you heard about them. He told himself he’d been lucky, but he didn’t believe it, and in spite of the deep wound to his pride he was sick with wanting her.
What, if anything, should he do now? He could call her or write a letter, demand an explanation or pretend that he understood. Or stay the hell away, give up on her this second time. He had been badly treated. Maybe she hadn’t intended to goad and frustrate him, but in the end she had not been afraid to do so. Maybe she’d only brought him along for the evening, brought him home, because he was someone she judged she could get the best of, dismiss easily. He didn’t really believe that of her, although thinking that way satisfied his darkest moods. She had only been unhappy. Unhappiness made people heedless of anything or anyone else, made them cruel.
Since there was nothing else he could do, he wrote a lot of poetry. In one sense this made him feel better, but it also rendered Chloe and everything that had happened between them more distant and fevered, and less real.
A couple of weeks passed. Jack couldn’t have been said to be avoiding her, since he didn’t know where she spent her time, but at least he’d kept himself from calling or showing up at her door. He was standing in line at a coffeehouse when Dex came up behind him, scanning the menu.
Jack nodded to him. He didn’t know if Dex remembered him. He had an equal, if contradictory, fear that Dex knew everything that had happened that night. “Oh, hey.” Dex said. “You’re the guy from the party.”
“The limo driver.”
“Yeah, how you doing?” Dex wore a red plaid cowboy shirt with shoulder seams shaped like arrows. He was so skinny, he looked like a little boy dressed by a mother with a bad sense of humor. Jack had to wonder about the rest of his closet. He paid for his coffee and moved away. But he wasn’t fast enough about adding cream, which was where Dex caught up with him. “Say, you talk to Chloe lately?”
Jack said that he had not. Dex opened three sugar packets, spiked his coffee with cinnamon, dumped in enough 2 percent milk to turn the whole mess gray. “She had to drop out of school, she had herself a little bit of a breakdown.”
“A what?”
“Nothing meds won’t cure. Poor girlie. Always tries so hard. She’s one of those people who thinks if you just make a plan and stick with it, if you’re very intelligent about it all, you get what you want.”
“Breakdown, what, she’s in the hospital?”
�
��Oh no, Mister Party Man, excuse me I forget your name. She went back to her folks in St. Louis.”
“But she’s all right?”
“Well sure. It was just a little episode. I honestly don’t know if she’d like me talking about it. It was sort of messy. She’s fine now. Good as new. Or will be.”
Jack was having trouble separating Dex’s prattle from what the words really meant. “What’s she doing there, St. Louis, she’s going to stay there?”
“For a while, I guess. Do Mom and Dad things. Take a little mental health break. Get away from El Beefhead.”
“The boyfriend …”
“That big sack of poop. He is so not helpful. I called him, I left messages. Nothing. What does it take to get some people’s attention? Girl takes a stomachful of pills and aspirates her own vomit and all that other good ER stuff. Oh shit. You did not hear me say that.”
If they’d been somewhere more private, Jack could have strangled Dex to get the real story from him, or maybe punched him out just on general principles. The worst he could do here would be to spill Dex’s coffee. “She tried to kill herself with pills?”
“Kill, I don’t know what she was trying to do. It could have been one of those cry for help things. I had, honestly, no idea. I mean sure, she was sad and all that, but I wasn’t thinking fragile.”
The person he really wanted to hit, Jack realized, was himself. “So the beef guy … ,” he began, hoping he was someone everything could be blamed on.
“Don’t get me started. Definitely not worth killing yourself over. Bout of hives, maybe. He owns that bar we went into the other night, or part of it. Wheeler-dealer. He owns a lot of stuff. I don’t know why she kept going back there. Scene of the crime.”
“Was he there that night? At the bar?”
City Boy Page 5