They had a great view of the lake to the islands, all with their own mini-parties. The sunset glinted off the empty beer cans floating in Lake Travis. On the nearest boat, a conversation drifted up about someone’s first beer bong. The inner tubers were beginning to come in as the water chilled, some abandoning their flotation devices like little acne outbreaks on the face of the lake.
They sat on a rocky crag. Lucia coughed. “Wanna see a set video for the new Frankenstein movie?”
“No.”
“That’s exactly what Hitler said when I asked him.”
Mindy let herself get drawn out of her funk. It was easy with Lucia, like going to bed after you’d taken Nyquil. “Hitler has good taste in movies.” And the sun set. Big and powerful, the clouds one kind of jewel, the sky another, the water another.
As far away as it was, as small and tiny as its part was, it seemed like it was theirs. Lucia sagged against her, Mindy’s arm around her waist, and they sat with dead leaves spun around them like party favors as they watched the color drip out of the world. The night turned cold, and the music came back on louder and more unbearable than ever.
“Feels like it’s not gonna come back up,” Lucia said. When Mindy looked at her, her eyes were darker than the night. “You’re not having fun.”
Mindy said nothing.
“I have a prescription for that.”
It was in her sock. A little envelope, like the ones that held fake rattlesnake eggs that scared Mindy when she was a little girl. Inside this was two little plastic baggies; inside those were two speckled-blue gelcap pills. Mindy didn’t say that they looked like robin’s eggs to her.
“Gimme your hands,” Lucia said, her voice slurring a little. She corrected herself, sounding like an honor student. “Give me your hands.”
Mindy held them out. Lucia put a baggie in each one, then pushed Mindy’s hands behind her own back, leaning into a little embrace in the process. She rested her chin on Mindy’s head.
“Would you trust me if I told you which one to take?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mindy said, into the hollow of Lucia’s delicate throat.
“Maybe I don’t trust me. Pass them around, Minz. Mix ’em up.”
Mindy switched the baggies in her hands. Thought better of it and switched them back. “What’s in them?”
“One’s poison…and the other’s the antidote.”
“You’re not making any sense, babe.”
“I don’t wanna make sense.” Lucia smiled. “Hold out your hands.”
Mindy brought her hands in front of her, closed, palms down—classic one or the other. Chicken or the egg, life or death, live or Memorex. Lucia tapped her right hand, and like she’d seen in all the movies, Mindy spun it around and opened it up. Quick as a thief, Lucia snatched up the baggie, opened it, and dumped the pill into her mouth. She dry-swallowed.
“Your turn.”
Under Lucia’s expectant eyes, Mindy opened up the little elastic band on the baggie. She pinched the bottom of it between her fingers and wiggled the pill out onto her palm. It sat there like a pet that refused to do a trick. She met Lucia’s eyes, heavy on her, and saw her irises blooming. Lucia grinned, seeing how Mindy wanted it.
“What’s in it?” Mindy asked desperately.
Lucia picked the pill up between slender fingers meant to paint masterpieces, play sonatas. “Trust.” She brought the pill up and Mindy felt it on her chapped lips, brushing the tiny cracks and crags. She parted her lips, and Lucia slipped it inside her with two fingers. Mindy tasted Lucia’s nail varnish—coppery. Lucia took her fingers away slowly and didn’t drop her hand until Mindy gulped like a cartoon character. It took a moment for Mindy to do it. She thought of spitting it out in her hand and telling Lucia she couldn’t. Or waiting for Lucia to step out and then making herself vomit it up. She’d never actually made herself throw up, but how hard could it be if supermodels did it?
But Lucia was trusting her to do this with her, and she trusted Lucia that it would be fun, just like the football game, just like riding shotgun delivering pizza. Just like the kiss.
“Do you feel any different?” Lucia asked, with her supernova eyes.
“No.”
“That’s good. Means it’s working. It doesn’t change you, you know. It changes the world. Haven’t you ever wanted to change the world?” Lucia looked at her forefinger, her middle finger, the tips wet with Mindy’s saliva. She brought them to her mouth and tasted them. “C’mon. Let’s dance.”
Mindy nodded.
“I just wanna dance,” Lucia said. “I just wanna dance with you.”
Her hand was bright white. It swam in the darkness like a little piece of the moon just for Mindy. How did you talk to the moon? How did you say no to it?
* * *
A few tiki torches were scattered about the picnic area, and the light from Bakula’s house shone bright, but real illumination only came from the cloud-strewn moon. The dancers going at it on and around the bolted-down tables were smeared with Day-Glo gels in a variety of styles, a dance floor of art projects. One person had cyberlocks—synthetic dreadlocks that glowed with LED lights. In the near-total darkness, they were anonymous bodies identifiable only by the radioactive paint on their bare skin. They reminded her of Dona Dolorosa paintings, Dia de Muertos. Spirits of the dead, given life for a day. Or night.
Mindy held tight to Lucia, only identifiable by how unidentifiable she was. No Day-Glo, no cyberlocks. The only thing on her that shone was her teeth when she smiled. In the ultraviolet light someone had set up, they glowed with florescent toothpaste. A Cheshire cat smiled grafted to her best friend.
“Follow my lead,” was Lucia’s only advice.
The flickering torchlight and the blasts of illumination from the house made the world shift in and out of darkness. Mindy was stepping out of her body, taking smoke breaks from her head. She saw herself step up behind Lucia and was there suddenly, right behind her, molding to her body like a shadow to a statue.
A beat, a moment of light and dark, a note of music, and Lucia was behind her. Mindy stood still now, like a mouse hypnotized by a cobra. Suddenly she felt Lucia’s hands sliding around her hips, bringing her to life, resting on her stomach. Lucia’s hips swayed. Mindy felt them all the way in that firm grip. The hands sashayed under her shirt, pulling her just a little closer, encouraging her to move just a little with Lucia’s rhythm.
Mindy wondered if the pill had kicked in. Was it supposed to mellow her out? She didn’t feel mellow. She felt like there was snow drifting down inside her body, blown back up by a hard wind, a storm wind, blown out to her arms and hands, fingers, legs, toes, sweaty palms…
But it didn’t feel bad. Lucia didn’t feel bad either. Her body was warm down Mindy’s back, the snow melting against their merging skin, tingling, dripping wet—Lucia dragged her lips across Mindy’s neck and it burnt, a hot shaft of summer sun in the middle of her winter.
Lucia’s hand on her arm turned her, or maybe steadied her as she turned in Lucia’s arms. Her own arms were shot through with snow, prickled with icicles. She lifted them, put them around Lucia’s neck for warmth. “I trust you,” she said. They were swaying, holding onto each other—feeling Lucia’s breasts press to her own, legs brushing together… Lucia’s foot stepping on Mindy’s. Mindy yowled a little and fell further into Lucia’s arms.
The world was soft and rounded, and its chill was a kind of warmth, the dark colors soothing, letting her eyes relax…all the darkness bled into itself, but Lucia was untouched… Mindy could see her inner light…her features sharp and distinguished in a world without edges… Everyone else was just a shadow, a worshipful fawning around Lucia. Because Lucia was a goddess. She kept it hidden from everyone else, but she let Mindy see. And Mindy was a goddess too.
“I wish you were a boy,” Lucia whispered, a sweet little glacier crashing into Mindy’s ear. “If you were a boy, I’d date you so hard.”
Snow melted. Then it froze again
, black ice that covered the street like a cancer, killed you cuz you couldn’t see it. “If I were a boy…” Mindy croaked, “what makes you think I couldn’t do better?”
Lucia’s voice was so sweet to listen to. “If I were a boy, I’d be a total slut…sleep with a bunch of other dudes. Pick ’em up at gay bars and on…they have an app. What’s the name of their app?” Her lips brushed against Mindy’s ear. “No one cares about you sleeping around when you’re a gay dude.”
The thing about ice was, if you pushed it to a wound, it made the pain numb.
Lucia pushed Mindy away. Black ice on the dancing shadows. Mindy saw Lucia’s golden arms raised to the moon, followed them down to the rest of Lucia arching her back like a cat—the hands came down, moving over her breasts, her belly, back up to cup and squeeze her flesh.
Mindy just stared—watched Lucia’s bare belly ripple, undulate… She wanted Lucia back. She moved for her, hugged her, tackled her, and Lucia screamed with laugher and Mindy screamed back, and they were falling off the rocks, into the water.
Drowning was the most peaceful way to die. Mindy remembered hearing that as she and Lucia sunk down, in their billowing funeral shrouds, staring at each other. It was cold—instant numbness—but there was a transcendence in the sudden shock of the water on them. It brought clarity. It was very Zen.
Lucia swam closer, golden hair billowing all around both of their faces like sunken treasure. Mindy hadn’t noticed before how blue her eyes were. Then Lucia’s lips jumped to hers, burnt through the cold, melted into her skin like a brand. Hot, but a good hot, born from lax warmth—sparks jumping off a fireplace. Mindy felt a core of molten heat inside her, like a living flame in her mouth strummed by Lucia’s tongue. Like Lucia had more control of it than she did.
Then Lucia was swimming away, long legs flashing in the moonlight—so beautiful, clothed in the moonlight shining over the rippling water. Mindy followed her down a tooth of land that bit into the lake with bare, stark stone. The cold and the water sobered her. She felt almost entirely back in her own head when she came to the end of the rock, where a solitary tree grew out between two boulders. Its black leaves formed a rune of starless black in the sky.
Mindy felt sand under her feet, wet satin, then a fallen log on the lakebed. It was overrun with slimy moss. Mindy stood on it, slippery, precarious, waves blowing on her with puffed cheeks. Trying to knock her off. In the distance, a speedboat and water-skier sawed through the middle of Lake Travis, making the water choppier.
Lucia clung to the lip of a boulder protruding from the water, hanging from it as the waves stirred her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. You’re really easy to kiss.” She didn’t sound sorry.
Mindy fell off the log, got back on as the speedboat circled in the distance. “Why not? That’s what people do when they love each other.”
CHAPTER 7
Lucia kicked off the rock to swim to Mindy. “Okay, how many pills did you take? One, right? Did you do some pre-gaming?”
Mindy shook her head and nearly toppled off the log. “I wanna talk. I want to talk. I’m not pressuring you, I don’t want you to come out of the closet. I just want you to break up with Quentin. We don’t have to be official, I just want us to be…real.” Mindy liked the sound of that. Who was it that said cellar door was the most beautiful phrase in the English language? A wrong person. She giggled, teetered off the log on one leg, and regained her balance.
Lucia was breathing hard. Mindy could see the little ripples in the water under her nose. “We are real, Minz. We’re really—good—friends.” It was almost in apology. She climbed onto the log as it shifted from side to side. “Other girls don’t do this.”
“And I don’t do this with other girls,” Mindy protested.
Lucia shrugged. “Maybe I do. I do it with Quentin. What do you even want, a celebrity couple name like Bennifer?”
“We kissed, El. We kissed just now, and we kissed before and…” Mindy paused. It seemed like there was something she was supposed to say, some spell she was supposed to cast, and she was doing it wrong. She was messing it up. “It was a good kiss.”
Lucia shrugged again, something exaggerated in the gesture, a kind of pantomime. “It was fun. We have fun. That doesn’t mean we’re in a relationship. I’m not a—not even gay. I’m just weird!” Lucia laughed it off.
Mindy felt just how cold the water was again. She’d gotten used to it, but—“You think I’m weird?”
“No, no!” The log wobbled, but Lucia kept absolutely still. “I’m weird. You’re just confused.”
The log kept shifting, but Mindy stopped trying to stay on top of it. She just floated. “Confused?”
The log settled. Lucia was balanced. “Yeah. I mean, you’ve gotta be confused. You don’t know if you’re gay or straight or bi or what. And here I am, just trying to be your friend, and you think we’re in love. I’m not even gay. I have a boyfriend.”
“Some boyfriend.” Mindy struck the water in front of Lucia, splashing them both. “Some boyfriend! He cheats on you! He hurts you! Why do you want someone who hurts you and not someone who loves you?”
Lucia kicked away the log; Mindy felt it roll by her leg. “I don’t know, because I’m not a dyke, okay? God!”
In the distance, the speedboat cut in front of an anchored yacht, kicking sea spray into its spectral white hull, proving it wasn’t a distorted reflection of the moon.
Lucia straightened her mess of damp hair. “I’m sorry—I don’t think there’s anything wrong with…”
“Fuck you, Lucinda.” Mindy walked past Lucia to pull herself out of the water. She got a good look at Lucia as she went by. A memory of her. “You kissed me. I was your friend before that. I wasn’t after. And I’m not now.”
In the night air, she was so cold it was like walking through goosebumps. She had to get her stuff and her money and get to her car and drive home and get gas, even. An eternity didn’t seem long enough to do all that. She was so cold.
Mindy got back into the water with tons of rock separating her from Lucia. She held her head under the water. That way, she didn’t have to know if she was crying or not.
* * *
Finally, when her lungs ached and her molten eyes had cooled, she rose through the veil of her drifting hair and drunk in air. Her thoughts were not her own; she felt tuned to a stranger’s radio station. She saw herself kiss Lucia, over and over again, from outside her body. Such a simple thing. A small thing. Just the touch of her lips. But she could remember the touch, the explosion of light that had erased night from her world, like it had left her red-hot and she still hadn’t cooled.
She pushed away from the rock, swimming a few strokes out, then letting herself drift on her back. Her body felt numb, alien. How could it just give itself to Lucia, let her change it, rule it, leaving her brain behind? How could her heart be on fire while Lucia’s was stone-cold? Hadn’t they met? How could Lucia feel nothing and Mindy feel everything? How could they be oil and water?
Something touched her back. She floundered herself up, putting her feet down into the depths, kicking to keep afloat. She’d drifted out from the shore several yards and, what, brushed against an underwater rock? Mindy looked around for it automatically, but the water was black as ink; the moon had gone behind some of the clouds that mired the sky. She dipped her head underwater. She saw nothing around her. Felt something tap her shoulder, like a person was trying to get her attention in a crowded room.
Her mouth opened, ejected her breath in a swarm of bubbles that flew around her face like bees. She came up spluttering, swallowing some water as she tried to gulp oxygen, just making her cough and choke in the night air. The sound of her hacking traveled over the surface of the water, hit her own ears like weird echoes. There was no one around to hear it. She was far from the party; the speedboat had gone back to shore.
She was about to start for shore herself when the moon came out, giving her some merciful light. She saw a shape like
an oil slick on the water in front of her. It flashed silver in the light. She ran her hand through it unthinkingly. Something warm clung to her skin. She looked closely at her palm. Her mind wasn’t racing yet; she spent a moment wondering what kind of water was on her hand before realizing. It was blood.
Bubbles came up all around her, suddenly, out of nowhere. It was like being in the middle of a boiling pot. She kicked away from them instinctively, backward, further away from shore. A cloud drifted in front of the moon; the light went off and back on like someone was flipping a switch. Mindy felt warmth all over her, tickling her like little fingers. She was swimming through blood.
Something popped to the surface in front of her. It took her a moment to recognize it as a dog. This wasn’t because she was complacent. It was because a dog is hard to recognize from only one half.
She turned and swam, cutting through the water, slashing it with her hands and feet. She would not go back to shore. She would not go anywhere near whatever had done that. The opposite shore was miles away, but the glowing white yacht was close by, maybe fifty feet.
She felt it brush her foot. It was not seaweed. It was not a rock. It had fingers.
She screamed as she swam, shouted for help, cried for it even as she forced water into her mouth with her speed. The world screamed back. She heard all at once the loud music, the cheering, all the sounds of the world going on without her. All at once the thought hit her: if she died, the world would barely notice. Lucia would barely notice.
The yacht was just ahead of her; adrenaline had slid the time right past her. She saw a ladder on its stern. The white hull filled her vision; reflecting the moonlight. Mindy spared a look back just before she reached the ladder. There was nothing she could make out in those waters, but for a moment, she thought she saw a spot of light reflect red instead of white. Twice. She knew her mind was running away with her, she knew she was seeing things, but the thought burrowed into her head: two glowing eyes.
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 9