Sinners Circle

by Sims, Karina

  I can feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up, my skin getting warmer as a few people by the DJ start swaying to the words. There’s an approaching sensation I can’t shake, but I’m not afraid because the stronger it gets, the more calm I feel.

  I close my eyes and relax my hands. My mind is still and my heart is tepid as Madonna’s words float through me. “I hear you call my name...and it feels like home...”

  Something warm and smooth touches my fingertips. I open my eyes to see Sophie standing in front of me, her ribbon bow lips parted into a grin. She is the only person in the room without a juice stain. “Amanda?”

  “Hi.”

  She blushes, looks down at her shoes, then back into my face. “Hi, I’m Sophie.”

  All that terrible light that was blinding me, but right now as she stands in front of it, if angels were real, they would look just like her. I’m not sure if they are supposed to have red hair though. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one, but during my twenty seven years in this world I can say that without a doubt Sophie is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

  “Hi Sophie.”

  “Would you like some punch?”

  “No.”

  She laughs, and my snatch gets so wet so fast I almost have an orgasm when she touches my shoulder. “Oh good. Me neither.” She pushes a finger through her lips, rubs it along the top of her gums, “Don’t need to look like I’ve been eating babies!”

  The crazies all around me, dancing under the Happy Anniversary banners, the plastic Welcome Home pennons, all these lunatics with their faces dyed red, teeth turning them all into vampires and Sophie smiling in front of me, I laugh so hard that I start crying.

  She puts her hand on my shoulder, pinches my arm. I’m smiling, wiping tears out of my eyes and trying to keep my voice from cracking when she says, “Are you OK? Are you OK?”

  I have to step back, catch my breath; the room’s tilting left then right, it starts spinning, my heart swelling huge every time Sophie takes a step closer and touches me. The more I blink, the more my vision blurs and I’m wiping my face so fast I don’t notice everything go black until I’m on my back laying on the floor. Before I know I’m even sprawled out here, Sophie’s head is on my chest, the music is off and all the juice drinking cannibals are staring at me. They look bored. I sit up, my hand grabbing Carl’s shoe. He kneels down. “You OK?”

  I nod, but I’m so dizzy I almost fall back down, Sophie catches my head. “You passed out. Do you want us to call a doctor?”

  I shake my head. “No, I’m fine. I just... need some air.”

  Sophie looks at Carl, Carl looks at Sophie, Sophie looks at me. “Would you like to go home?”

  I fish in my pocket, hand Carl my keys. He looks at Sophie. “I have to watch the floor until ten.”

  She frowns. “Are you working shift?”

  He nods, tucks my keys in his pocket. “Yeah...” He helps me to my feet. All the nearby nut cases give me dirty looks.

  Linda from the punch bowl pushes a cup in my hand, even though its water, I still swirl it around before gulping it down. Sophie takes it away from me, crushes it and puts it in her pocket and sighs. “I guess, I mean, I can take her home.”

  Carl pats my shoulder. “She lives way on the other side...”

  The music starts back up and I’m about to tell them I’m fine, I’m completely OK, but Sophie says, “No I mean back to my place. She can crash on the couch.” I shut my mouth, put a hand to my head like I’m still dizzy and just stand there waiting.

  This time, on the way down to the parking lot, we take the elevator and leave through the main doors. This time, it doesn’t feel like a nightmare, because as we’re riding the elevator she pushes the button and slips her fingers through mine. Our hands, they fit together perfectly. Palms pressed against each other, we walk out the front doors of the hospital.

  Steering through traffic she tells me all about her pet cat. At a traffic light she tells me how much she doesn’t like dogs. At a four way stop she says, “My favorite smell ever is, you know when you huff on a sleepy kitten stretching and just waking up? Or a hamster that’s sound asleep? That’s my favorite ever.”

  Her whole apartment smells like fresh cucumbers and she even fluffs the pillow on the bed she makes for me on the couch. When I’m lying there staring at her spotless ceiling listening to her hum as she cuts up a lemon to put in some ice water for me, she tells me that the bathroom is down the hall if I need it, right beside her bedroom. When she disappears for a few minutes and then comes back in her pajamas, she wishes me good night and closes her door. I wait a few minutes.

  I pull down the covers she tucked around me and I sneak quietly to her bedroom. I close my eyes and think of her head on my chest and her hand on my shoulder. I think of how beautiful her lips looked when she said “I don’t eat babies.” I think about how wet I got when she touched my shoulder. I think about her hands and fingers looped through mine in the elevator. When I open my eyes again, my hand is on the center of her wood door. I can’t help but sighing, I take my hand away, let it sway at my side, then walk back to the couch and crawl back under the blankets. As I sleep I dream about my mother humming to me and playing with my hair while she drank gin and we watched TV. I dream about Gina in the bathtub. I dream about lemons and cucumbers, cats and traffic lights. I dream of Sophie and angel wings. I dream of her until I am awake and she is holding out a mug of Chamomile tea for me to take. She smiles and asks me, “How was your sleep?”

  XXIV

  “Nietzsche tastes better than Twain, but Twain tastes better than Jung.”

  “Who?”

  “Jung.” Scott holds up a chewed cover of The Red Book, the only thing that’s left of the entire thing. “Carl Jung.”

  “Oh.”

  I pat my pockets for cigarettes then tap Carl’s arm. “You got any smokes?”

  Scott points to the corner in the ceiling, at a paper-mâché attempt of the Millennium Falcon. “See that? That’s the whole series of The Hardy Boys.”

  Carl hands me a cigarette, offers one to Scott but he shakes his head. “Shit is unhealthy man. Shit will kill you.”

  I’m suddenly aware of what that horrible smell was when I entered Scott’s house. Now I know it’s his bowel-made papier-mâché Star Wars art dangling in the corner. I light my cigarette and blow the smoke out my nose. Scott, he’s our drug dealer. Carl and I, we come over, talk with Scott for about an hour, pretend to be friends, and then we leave without any genuine concern for his mortality.

  The weird thing is though, Carl and I, we’ve been coming to Scott for just over a year now and I’ve never seen him eat any food. Nor have I seen any trace evidence of him actually possessing food. His refrigerator, it’s full of various drugs, neatly categorized next to dozens of bottles of booze and jam jars of urine. He keeps his piss in the fridge so he can drink it a few days after a real peyote bender, “Just like the Indians did,” he tells us. Apparently, this will keep him high.

  What I find truly ridiculous is that Scott will eat an entire set of encyclopedias, but if you mention the possibility of him consuming any meat or animal product he’ll look at you like you’re a walking talking pile of garbage and say something like, “As a human being, I’m just not comfortable with eating flesh.” The closest thing to food I’ve ever seen him eat was a recipe book some customer of his dropped off along with dozens of others containing recipes for dishes served in other countries around the world—no kidding.

  This being said, Scott is also the only dealer in the city who sells decent heroin at a low cost, and if I don’t have to see him all the time and I’m getting good drugs for cheap, I really don’t mind wasting an hour with him every now and then. Even if it is spent with him showing me his paper-mâché-poo-fan-art.

  We stick around while Scott talks about wanting to make a sculpture of Jesus by eating dozens of copies of Gideon’s Bible and using his self made mâché. “If I died, I would die a martyr. See, i
t’d be a martyr’s death because I would be trying to bring a statue of Christ into this world using my own body. I’d get into heaven for sure.” We stick around while he cuts up our drugs, weighs them, wraps them all the while talking about how in love he is with his sister. “But she’s got that husband man... that fucking husband. I tell you though, if he wasn’t in the picture, we would be one. We are one, do you hear me Amanda? Do you hear me?”

  We stay while he eats our money. But we leave when he walks over to the fridge, gets out a jar of piss and starts drinking it on the couch.

  In the car Carl asks me if I have any money.

  “Yeah a couple bucks.”

  “You wanna go get a beer?”

  We go to Pinks, sit down at a booth. Ronnie is there with some girl in a latex mini skirt and fishnets. She’s smoking a cigarette and saying, “... he sits there in his car, gives me cash then waits for me to come back into the alley with guys. When I’m done fucking them I go back to his car and squeeze the jizz out onto his face. He’ll sit there for about two hours, hands on the steering wheel, not wiping the cum off his face. It’s fucking gross, but it pays for my groceries.”

  I wave two fingers at a passing waitress, she looks confused then nods and heads to the bar. The mini skirt girl says, “not that I can bare looking at him anyway, but after the fifth or sixth rubber I just can’t do it anymore.” She taps the ash of her smoke into an empty wine glass. “Sickest part is, he gets off on that shit. He gets off that I’m so disgusted I can’t even look at him.”

  Ronnie brushes some hair off his face, his voice the volume of a mouse. “Wow, right.”

  Mini skirt looks at us.

  Carl smiles, waves like a coward. “Oh hi.”

  She doesn’t look impressed. “Oh hi, Carl. You going to buy me a drink? Whose your lady friend?”

  He looks at me, she looks at me, I look at the waitress over at the bar fumbling with a bottle opener. Mini skirt kicks my shin under the table. “Hey. I’m talking to you. What the fuck is your name?”

  I scratch my neck. “If I gave you twelve dollars, would you let me punch you in the face?”

  She drops her cigarette into her wine glass. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

  “What if I gave you twelve fifty? Could I shave your pussy, too?”

  She shouts: “What are you? Some kind of sick dyke?”

  The entire crowd here at Pinks, they stop what they are doing and look at her, and the eruption of insults thrown—I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It doesn’t even take until the count of three for a glass of beer to splash her makeup half off. A bottle bursts at her feet and an entire bowl of maraschino cherries lands in her hair. The way she’s breathing while a small army of bull dykes push her out the doors and up the stairs, I can tell she’s having a panic attack.

  After that, I get free drinks and phone numbers, coming out to parents stories, pats on the back and numberless shared cigarettes from every woman in the bar. And it’s ladies night.

  Ronnie doesn’t say anything, he just keeps sniffing tiny bags of drugs and dropping them on the floor. When it’s closing time, the waitress, she even gives me and Carl money to get a cab home. She says, “Sorry about that, what a bitch. How could she say those things to another human being? It’s completely degrading...”

  Carl collapses on the couch, I’m asleep before I hit the pillow and I dream of nothing.

  XXV

  “He wrote me a love poem and then put it on my pillow. So when I woke up this morning, even though he wasn’t there, I could feel his love for me.” Alison hugs a piece of paper to her chest. “I’m keeping this forever.”

  I crack my neck, tap my cigarette. “Whatever.”

  She closes her eyes and sighs. “How could you say something like that about something as beautiful as this?” She presses the paper deep between her tits.

  I shake my head. “Love poems are the receipt, the proof of purchase, of all the crap you just bought into.”

  “What kind of sick person looks at love that way?”

  I poke her paper chest. “Same question.”

  She frowns, turns around and goes back into the coffee shop. Trisha looks at me, but the second our eyes connect she drops her head and pretends to be cleaning a table.

  I walk back to work. Harry’s sucking on something, a big wad of rubbery gum. “You got the inventory sheets done?”

  I nod. “Yeah, I got ‘em done.”

  He sucks on that huge ball in his mouth. “Kay, wanna put them in my office when you got a minute?”

  “Sure.” I grab the clipboard, flip through the sheets to make sure they are all there and hand it to him.

  He keeps sucking, biting down and popping his jaw wide open between chews. “No, in my office.”

  I walk to his closet office but the door is locked, he stares at me for a few seconds, digs in his pockets and clears his throat while he sorts through his massive key ring. He tries a few but none work, eventually when he does and the door is open I toss the clipboard onto his desk. A stress ball rolls off a pile of papers falls down and knocks over the garbage can, litter spilling all over the floor. Strangely though, the only trash in there is little balls of electrical tape and crunched up strips of paper. Harry points to the corner at the end of the hall outside his office. There’s a broom and dustpan leaning against the door frame of the bathroom. I sweep up his tape and paper trash, dump it all back into the bin and check my watch. My shift is over in ten minutes.

  Harry says, “Next week I’m not gonna be here for two days. So I’ll need you to do tills and closing on both nights.”

  “Sure.”

  He nods, turning that ball of rubber gum over in his mouth. “Ok good.”

  I stop for a pack of smokes and a case of beer at a convenience store.

  When I get home Sophie is sitting on my front steps reading a book. When I get out of the car and wave to her she doesn’t stand up. She just sits there smiling and squinting the sun out of her eyes. “Oh good, you got your car back.”

  “Yeah Carl brought it back the other day after work.”

  She looks back at her book, shrugs, then back at me. “Well that’s good, I guess.”

  “Yeah. What are you doing here?”

  “Huh?”

  I point to the house. “At my house. How’d you know I live here?”

  She turns around, looks at the house, back at me and holds the book up to shield her eyes. I stand in front of her so I block the sun. She laughs. “Oh, Carl dropped me off here after work today. I hope you don’t mind. Like, you don’t think it’s weird or something...”

  “Oh no, not at all. I mean I really don’t mind. I’m happy you’re here... I hope you don`t think that`s weird.”

  She blushes, looks down at her feet. “No I don’t think...” Sophie, that beautiful girl, that woman with the glowing eyes that make my chest feel weak, she stands up and wraps her arms around me. Her hair smells like lilacs. “I don’t think that’s weird.” She backs up a little, “Do you think it’s weird if I hug you?”

  “No. I like when you touch me.”

  She looks down at her feet again. She doesn’t say anything and I don’t say anything and the silence keeps growing heavier with every second we don’t say or do anything. I swing the case of beer a little. “I gotta go put this inside.”

  “Oh OK, well...”

  “You wanna come in?”

  “Yeah, yeah for sure.”

  I put my beer in the fridge, hand her one and turn on the TV. She just stands there, smiling at nothing, looking around the ceiling and bumping her little fist against her hip. “You want to sit?” I pat the seat next to me. “I don’t bite.”

  She sits down.

  “Do I scare you?”

  She smiles, sips her beer. “No.”

  “Well, wouldn’t really matter then, would it?”

  “I guess not...”

  We sit there, staring at Homer Simpson on the TV. I scratch my neck and cle
ar my throat. “So how do you know Carl?”

  “Well, we work together.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You?”

  “Met him a few years ago.”

  “Oh.” She scratches at her beer label. “Are you guys... I mean have you, were you like... seeing each other?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like...”

  “Huh?”

  She tents her index fingers. “Together?”

  Just before I go to speak, beer slips down the wrong tube and I cough so hard she has to pat my back. When I can breathe again, I shake my head. “Oh hell no. We’re just friends.”

  “Oh, yeah I thought so. You never know though.”

  “Hey, what do you think of love poetry?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like poetry?”

  “Do you write?”

  “What?”

  “You write poetry?”

  “Oh God no.”

  She looks a little disappointed. “Oh, yeah.”

  “No, I was just wondering because my friend, well Carl, wrote Alison this poem today and I thought it was kinda gay, and...” She winces when I say gay, so I pat her leg and she looks slightly alarmed because I start speaking faster to try and undo the whole slur thing. “Not that there’s anything wrong with gays, I mean I like gay people, I just mean, I’m just saying like…”

  She frowns, puts down her beer. “What are you saying?”

  “Uh...” I realize my hand is still on her leg, I whip it away, rap my knuckles against the back of the couch. “I just mean, like, poetry is lame.”

  On the TV, Nelson Muntz “Haw Haw”s.

  I drum my fingers on the back of the couch and just wish to God I had kept my mouth shut. As more and more of that awful, heavy silence falls between us.