by Emily Bishop
I couldn’t fucking shake it.
But no. This wasn’t the man I was. I’d never really been a lover. In the back of my mind, I’d always had this wild streak, this affinity to tear through the world and take no fucking prisoners. Remy, and any child we created, couldn’t have any part of that.
“Hey! Are you going to come back in here? Drink this champagne?” the girl called out to me, her voice high-pitched. “Because otherwise, I’m going to drink it myself. All of it. It’s gonna be like a fountain down my throat.”
What was it about people you couldn’t ever shake? I wondered. Every second on the road, I’d grabbed at whatever opportunity I could. Had raucous conversations with men at divebars from San Francisco to Florida to Maine and everywhere in between. Yet Quintin and Remy? They remained my family. My blood. Hank had always been just an afterthought, God fucking rest his soul. No one I’d ever connected to, as an adult. “You still doing that vagabond bullshit?” he’d asked me a few Christmases back, his arm slung around his near-perfect biddy. That poor fucking widow.
“Drink whatever the hell you want. Just get out,” I called back to the girl, who was now wearing only a bra and underwear. The strap of the thong snaked up over her hipbone. The bone gleamed beneath her porcelain skin.
“Fine. Asshole,” she scoffed. “Not like I wanted to fuck you, anyway.”
I heard her clip the door shut behind me. Only my heartbeat echoed in the silence. I was awash in confusion.
Over the next three days, I spent countless hours at the blackjack table. Things didn’t begin to go south until day two, when I lost almost two thousand dollars in a single run. I felt the money slipping away from me. But it twitched on, just beyond my reach, and I strained for it—remaining at the blackjack table for almost eight hours, trying to make it back. By the end, the dealer had begun to look at me down his nose. He muttered, “If you stop now, you’ll still have enough to stay in your hotel room another night, mate. You better get the hell off.”
I did. I flung my fist into the counter as I left, feeling my anger echo against the walls of the casino. “Fuck all of this,” I muttered to myself, leering at the passersby. “Fuck all of you.”
Hours later, I returned to the balcony, feeling broken. I gazed out at the strange, glowing city in the center of the desert. After a long sigh, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It had been a long fucking time since someone had called me. No one currently knew my location—not Quintin, and certainly not Remy. Probably, they had ideas I was sitting in some jazz bar in New Orleans or cleaning up with girls somewhere in Brooklyn. I’d been that man. That man high on life, on the world. But now, I felt like nothing.
* * *
I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it anyway.
“Hello, Wesley Adams here,” I said, my voice gruff, even in my own ears. The words almost slurred, showing the number of whiskeys I’d drank.
After a pause, I heard the sweet voice, so tiny in my ear. “Hey, Wes,” Remy said. “It’s… me. It’s Remy.”
“Remy.” Her name tasted so goddamn good against my tongue. I remained gruff with her, remembering the last time we’d spoken. She’d kicked me from the pub. She hadn’t wanted my heir. “Surprised to hear from you.”
“Yes. Yes, I bet,” she said, sounding tentative. “Where did you go? Quintin said you rode out a few days ago.”
I marveled at how much she’d wanted to speak to me. I knew she normally kept thoughts of me to herself, choosing not to involve Quintin. But it was clear that she’d had to ask Quintin for my phone number.
“I’m in beautiful Las Vegas,” I sighed, chuckling. “You know, it really is the fucking armpit of the world, this place. You should see what these tourists look like. We always thought San Francisco tourists were ugly.”
“Ha,” she said. “I can only imagine. I never made it over there, when I was in LA. Course, I never had the cash for it. Tyler always wanted to go. Said we could get married over there or something. How romantic, right? Getting married in Las Vegas. What I always wanted.” She spoke sarcastically, already letting me in on her game.
“Sure. I’ve spotted about ten happy couples here. Wonder how long it’ll last,” I said, matching her tone. “Probably forever.”
“Or a few hours,” she snickered.
“Or that.” I paused for a moment, drawing my finger along the railing of the balcony. “Why are you calling, Rem?” I asked.
“I was just up late again, working on the script,” Remy said, sounding anxious. “And I realized… Well, I realized that maybe you had a point.”
“A point?” I asked her. My heart began to pump wildly in my chest. Was she actually going to go along with it? Was she actually going to give in?
“It’s not like I’m living for anything,” Remy continued. “I’m washed up, more or less.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” I told her, surprising even myself. I sounded arrogant, wild—as if her putting herself down like that was an affront to me.
“Well, it’s not important. Rather, Wes, what I’m trying to say is…” She paused.
I tried to visualize her on the other end of the phone, drawing up the courage to say what she wanted to say. But instead, I just pictured the eighteen-year-old her, screaming at me during the “last fight” of our relationship. How fucking focused we’d been on our “careers,” on “what we were going to become.”
“I just. I don’t know. Get back here. And we can talk about it,” Remy finally said. “If you can muster the energy to get back to San Francisco. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll consider doing this for you.”
“For us, you mean,” I told her, hating the way my voice had grown so soft, so eager. “For us.”
“I don’t know. Just get back here. Stop wasting your time in that armpit of America, or whatever, and come back to the Bay.”
It was all I needed to hear. After hanging up the phone, I barreled toward the hotel room refrigerator, yanking out several energy drinks and filling my backpack pockets. I lurched my head back, glugging one and feeling it scald my tongue. Soon, I’d be back in the Bay. I’d convince Remy to birth my kid—thus fill my bank account. And then, I wouldn’t have to hunker down at odd jobs. The world would be mine.
Of course, as I raced down the hallway, that now-familiar image of Remy, pregnant and glowing in the sunlight, swarmed my brain. I tried to stamp it out, to avoid the way it sizzled in my heart. Remy and I had been down that road of love. I knew already I was incapable. That whatever happened between us would be something of convenience, rather than emotion. I had to resist it.
8
Remy
Wesley messaged me when he was just a few hours outside of the Bay. I was at the bar, as usual. My hands shook with sudden nerves, unable to grip the phone. The text was simple enough. “Hey. I’ll be back tonight. What about I use the last of these Vegas funds to take us out? A nice dinner. We’ve never had something like that, Rem.”
It was true. Throughout our teenage years, we’d subsisted mostly off of cigarettes and stolen alcohol, hot dogs, and whatever else we could squander from my parents’ pantry. We’d hardly been to a sit-down restaurant, unless you counted the diner. At the time—before all those fancy dinners with Tyler—I’d counted those meals as sit-down, as almost romantic. As long as I was with Wesley, it was enough.
Quintin caught me shaking and was eyeing me darkly from his stance at the microwave. On the platter inside, a stack of mozzarella sticks sizzled. The fare we sold at Station to Station wasn’t exactly high-end, but it’s what the clientele wanted.
“You’re anxious today,” he said, his voice booming. Sometimes, he spoke so similarly to Wes, it freaked me out. “What’s going on? You stay up all night working on the script again?”
“Of course I did.” I gave him a small smile. “It’s all I can think about.” This had been true until Wesley had flown into town and then back out. This had been true before the topic of “to breed or not to breed” had dropped
on the table.
“You gotta give yourself a rest,” Quintin said. He pulled the platter of mozzarella sticks from the microwave, taking one for himself. His pause wasn’t long enough before he took a bite and made a face. With eyes clenched, he muttered, “Fuck! Fuck fuck. So hot.”
* * *
Sometimes, it seemed no one actually grew up.
“Actually, I’d love the night off,” I said to him, watching him drop the platter in front of—who else?—drunk Marshall. “I want to sleep and edit the back-half of the script. And Mondays are normally pretty dead, right?”
“Sure thing,” Quintin said. He nodded, tapping the back of his pants pocket and drawing out a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t mind at all. Just let me take a smoke break and you can be on your way.”
After Quintin ambled back in, reeking of smoke, I waved my goodbye, slipped off my apron, and darted across the street. My legs were all jittery, like a wild animal’s or a strange bug’s. I certainly felt bug-eyed. Back at my apartment, I reached for the half-drunk bottle of white in the fridge and chugged it back, hoping it would calm my nerves. “You’re going to do it,” I whispered to myself, conscious that this decision was akin to jumping off a cliff. “You’re going to have this baby. You’re going to take the money. And you’re going to make your film.”
It was all I wanted in the world.
But of course, I had questions churning in the back of my mind. What on earth would this reality feel like, once it happened? My belly, stretched out and filled with Wes’s child? A baby, so tiny, a nubby nose and bright eyes like Wes’s, wrapped in a blanket and tucked in my arms?
Just imagining the weight of the child brought a wave of love through my heart. A wave of “what could be.” And then—once born—what next? Would I help raise this baby? Would I see his first steps, or hold her hand? Would I kiss her good night, or sing him songs?
My maternal instincts, left behind years ago, or so I’d thought, swirled in my heart.
* * *
I slipped into a light yellow dress—almost virginal, I thought—and walked across the city, west, toward the water. I was familiar with the steep inclines and declines of the city, my muscles cranking up and stalling, depending on which direction I went. It was early September, and the air was surprisingly cool, glittering across the sweat beads on my arms and legs as I walked. I imagined what Wesley would say when he spotted me in this dress. Perhaps that I looked just as I had as a younger girl—an eighteen-year-old with my arms spread out for the world. Perhaps that he wanted to fuck me in it. That he wanted our baby to be conceived that night.
I walked a bit north, toward the pier, stood near the edge, and gazed out at the haze of Alcatraz Island, the old prison. When Wesley and I were sixteen, maybe seventeen, we’d taken the ferry across, holding hands as the wind whipped at our hair. We’d listened in rapt amazement to the stories of the men who’d lived—and escaped—there. Something about the way Wesley had strutted through the grounds, so sure of himself, had told me that he wasn’t the type to stay home, to read about stories like this. He was the type to live them. He so wanted to charge his way through life.
And in so many respects, that’s what I had wanted, too.
Wesley texted me details for the restaurant: near the Golden Gate Bridge, overlooking the water. Eight-thirty. “I can pick you up wherever you are,” he said. But I told him I would meet him there. I needed as much time as I could get to mentally prepare. I knew now that seeing him put a jolt of love, of lust, through my stomach and spine. It was akin to looking at the most beautiful memory you’d ever had, walking along, living life without you. You needed to cling onto it more than it ever needed you at all. It was painful, in its beauty.
I arrived at the restaurant just after eight-twenty. It was a trendy, high-end seafood restaurant, with white tablecloths, a wide window that stretched out toward the cliffs, and high-waisted-jeans-wearing techie-hipsters eating six-course meals with their multi-hundred-thousand-dollar salaries. I could smell the tech money on the San Franciscans now, and recognize that they weren’t the same crew I’d been surrounded by as a younger girl. When I’d so loved my city.
The maître d’ led me to a candlelit table at the far end of the restaurant. I ordered a deep Chianti, something I recognized from Italy, which Tyler had loved. I sipped the wine a bit too quickly, listening to a table a few away from me. The man—glasses, a V-neck sweater—was explaining the start-up he wanted to build, which, he said, would revolutionize the meatpacking industry. My stomach felt twisted. These people weren’t Wes’s people or mine.
Wes appeared in the doorway, following the maître d’. Immediately, my stomach clenched with fear. He smiled at me, and I could feel the depth of his penetrating eyes. His legs—long, muscular, stretched forward—illuminated his expensive, almost European-looking shoes. I wondered if he’d gone shopping in Vegas.
I stood, almost feeling like I was floating. He reached me and kissed my cheek, murmuring in my ear. “You must be the prettiest girl in this entire restaurant.”
It was what he’d said when we were children, teenagers. He’d always said it like that, like it was our secret. We were all the other needed.
My cheeks grew bright red as I sat across from him, watching his familiar lips order a whiskey. He gestured around him, at the crowded techie-filled tables. “What happened to our city, Remy?” he asked, cackling. “These assholes, they’re taking over! And they’re working for my father. Building that family fortune.”|
I shifted, remembering that was the point of this dinner: his family’s fortune. In a sense, the people around us were cogs in the machine that would align me with my movie. I swallowed sharply, feeling suddenly disgusted with myself. Hunting for words, I watched as the server returned with a whiskey and took Wesley’s rather surprising appetizer orders—calamari, a type of Spanish cheese, and a high-grain bread. “Everyone in this town is avoiding bread, but I say, let’s embrace it!” he said. “We only live once, right?”
He was the man I’d loved. Perhaps, in some ways, that love wasn’t eager to go away.
“I appreciate that sentiment,” I said, giggling. “If you’re going to die tomorrow, you’d rather say that you ate some grainy bread than some spinach salad, I guess.”
“Imagine being on your deathbed and saying, God, I wish I could have one more salad,” Wesley said. “It’s not the type of life you and I were ever meant to live. I think we both knew that.”
The appetizers came, and Wesley ordered us a first course, then a second. We dove into the conversation of old friends, of old lovers. What we’d been like at the age of twenty-five. “An actual asshole, instead of someone just flirting with the idea,” Wesley told me. “I thought the entire world belonged to me. I think I robbed one too many gas stations in North Carolina and now I can’t go back to the entire state. I also almost married this woman in Alabama, just so I could learn her apple pie recipe.”
I chuckled, lost in his eyes. “When I was twenty-five, I was probably going to my millionth audition,” I said. “Running lines with Sam. You remember Sam?”
“Oh, your prissy best friend. Sure,” Wesley said. His hand twitched over the tablecloth, drawing over mine. Our skin sizzled at the touch. “I remember her. I remember how much she hated me.”
“Just at the end,” I said. “But I guess that’s appropriate.”
“To think, we thought it would be the end,” Wesley said, leaning closer to me. “But here we are, Rem. And you—you said you might want to talk to me about, you know.”
I sniffed, feeling a smile twitch across my lips. Everything within me glowed, as if my body was ready, eager to leap over to him. My heart pumped wildly, feeling like it was going to shatter me. I wanted to blast from the restaurant, to fuck him directly on the pier. I craved his every inch.
“Because, well, I know you know this, but I could have any girl do this,” Wesley began. “Have my heir, whatever. But I want you to do it. Of all the girls in the
world.”
I felt a wave of rage, intermixed with sadness. I gripped my neck, my eyes searching his face. “Any girl in the world?” I asked, my voice soft.
Wesley recognized he’d made a mistake. He drew back, crossing his arms over his chest. Silence fell.
“Come on. Say something,” I snapped. “You’re always so ready to say something, Wesley. And now you’re so quiet.”
My mind raced. I rose and strode toward the door, my heels clacking on the fine wood floors. The techie millionaires erupted in laughter as I marched past.
Within seconds, I found my route just outside the door and barreled toward the sand. The beach was in full view of the Golden Gate, glowing in its familiar red across the bay. I stood, shaking and staring out at it. A sight I’d taken for granted of as a teenager. A sight that now seemed to regenerate me.
I couldn’t believe I’d almost made such a mistake: fucking and creating new life with one of the most arrogant men in the world. Yes, he’d been my love. But I’d wised up. Become an artist. Not just some woman he wanted to toss onto his mattress and fuck. “I could have any girl do this.” The words echoed from ear to ear. “I could have any girl in the world.”
OK, I thought. Then why the hell don’t you? I obviously wasn’t enough for you before. Why the hell should I be good enough for you now?
I steamed, knowing Wesley would just hop up on his motorbike and rush out of town, leaving me there beneath the moon. I knew he would, because people didn’t change. It was one of the first rules of screenwriting: your characters always did things within their character boundaries. They said the things they were always going to say. And Wesley? Once the baby was born, anyway, he would be out of my life. And I knew I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to hack it.