Mules:: A Novel

by Jarred Martin

  “No, baby. I wasn’t mad at you. I’m glad you came with me, honest. We’re gonna have fun. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Els said. She rubbed at her eye with a knuckle.”

  “Yeah?” Said Neesha.

  Els nodded. “Yeah.”

  Neesha smiled encouragingly. “Cool. Lets go check out the pool first, see if they skimmed the drowned hookers out.”

  They were outside and Neesha closed the door behind them. She looked around the lot. “Okay, so where the hell is the pool?”

  “I don’t know,” said Els. “He said we couldn’t miss it.” Honestly, Els wasn’t looking forward to getting into a pool with Neesha. It wasn’t the pool, really: It was the swimsuits. Els was self-conscious. She was two full inches under five feet and sort of chubby, not fat exactly, not in a ride-a-Rascal-around-Wal-Mart kind of way, but she felt like her body had a natural thickness to it; an asymmetrical accumulation of pudge that belied a surprisingly muscular core. And then there were her breasts. They were enormous, disproportionate to the rest of her body. Her bra size was 44 triple E, and she hated the way they sloped down her stomach, hanging like two over-sized sacks of flab with her ugly, oblong areolas and thick pale nipples pointing straight down. She had to get her bathing suits from a section of the store for people with weird, fat bodies that apparently didn’t deserve cute clothes, and they never fit her right. She wasn’t eager to display her body alongside Neesha’s, with her lean, athletic build, small perky breasts and unblemished ebony skin. Els though there would be no choice but to invite unwelcome comparisons. Back in Florida she hardly ever went to the beach, and when she did she never stripped down to anything more revealing than a tank top, choosing to bake in the sand rather than go into the water. Els knew that they were on spring break, and breaking out her one-piece swimsuit was inevitable, and it was the inevitability that made her dread it all the more.

  The two girls stepped out into the parking lot. They had only gone a few steps when they heard the sound of male voices echoing off the the brick outer walls of the motel. Neesha headed toward the voices with Els following behind. Around the side they found half-a-dozen college-aged guys gathered together on the lot. They were drinking cans of beer, dressed in swim trunks. One of them was reclining on a pool raft lying on the asphalt, another had inflatable water wings around his biceps and sat in the middle of an inner tube. Others sat in lawn chairs, talking loudly, their voices slurred from alcohol. One guy in a backwards red hat, arms covered in a sleeve of tattoos was up and had flipped the lid back on an ice chest, about to plunge his heavily-inked arms inside when he saw the girls approaching. “Beads!” He shouted at the girls.

  “Yeah! We got beads,” another one joined him, swinging a string of plastic Mardi Gras beads above his head to entice them.

  “Fucking show us your tits!”

  “Fuck yeah, pull them things out. We got beer.”

  They were assaulted with further catcalls and leers that made Els cringe. She looked to Neesha, about to tell her that they should leave, when she noticed a weird sort of flattered smile on her face.

  “Dude!” The one with the water wings said. “Look at the fucking short one. You can have all the beads, girl. Just flash us them big monster titties!” The boys laughed in agreement and shouted further words of encouragement at her.

  Els crossed her arms over her breasts, uncomfortable. She didn’t need to take off her shirt. The way they were staring at her already made her feel naked, vulnerable. She felt awkward and wanted, yet again, to tell Neesha that they should go. But Neesha was already walking over to them.

  “What’s up, guys?” she asked.

  “Fucking chilling,” the boy at the ice chest said. “You wanna beer?”

  “No. I don’t like beer.”

  “Fucking girls. Here. It’s cold. It’s good. I insist.”

  He held the can out and smiled. She thought he looked kind of cute except for the tats. It was too dark to see them clearly, but she thought tattoos either made guys look like convicts, or pussies trying to look like convicts. Either way it was unappealing to her. She took the beer anyway.

  “Where are you guys from?” she asked.

  “I’m Tucker,” the one with the tattoos said. “That’s Todd, Cody, and Kyle,” he pointed them out to her. Four of the lamest white boy names she had ever heard. “We go to University of Houston.” He turned his hat around so she could read the University of Houston logo. “Those other two guys,” he pointed to the one with the water wings and a short redheaded one, “they’re from Southern Miss, I think. We just met them tonight.”

  “Oh, cool,” she said, opening the beer. “We’re from Florida. UF.” She took a drink and grimaced. “Gross.” She handed it back to him. “Really we were just looking for the pool.”

  “Oh shit,” Tucker laughed, “Don’t drown, okay?”

  “Um. . . I don’t plan on it.”

  “No,” Tucker shook his head and grinned at her again. “I mean don’t drown cause you’re standing in the deep end. See.” He pointed to the blacktop beneath them.

  “Huh. . .” She could make out in the faint light that they were all within a large rectangle, painted blue. It had perhaps at one time designated a space for a pool, but judging from the faded look of the paint, that concept had been abandoned some time ago.

  “I fucking hate this place, I really do.”

  “Don’t let that ruin anything,” said Tucker. “We are on an island, you know.”

  “No, this place is just shady. I mean, the rooms are like the inside of a fucking dumpster.”

  “Really? They seem alright to me. Of course, where I stay back in Houston had to be disinfected because of a Staph outbreak.”

  “Oh my God, you guys are disgusting,” she teased.

  “Yeah,” he laughed again. “I’m clean, though. These other guys,” he made a gesture to the five other boys around him, “you don’t wanna know what they got. I wouldn’t even shake hands with them.”

  Neesha laughed and gingerly touched his arm. Tattoos or not, Neesha was starting to warm up to this guy. He had a sort of charm about him.

  “Hey, fuck you, man. I’m clean. I use Zest!” one of the boys, Kyle, maybe, called out.

  Tucker shook his head. “He doesn’t, though. He took a shower with a bottle of dish washing liquid before.”

  “You used it too, man,” the one that might be Kyle said. “It’s the only way I could get those stubborn ketchup stains out. And when I was done I smelled like a grove of fresh lemon trees.”

  “You guys are funny,” said Neesha.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, for fucking frat boys.”

  Tucker laughed, “Alright, I’ll take it. Listen, you wanna stick around for a little bit? Hang out with us? We got tequila since you’re too girly to drink beer.”

  “You got limes and salt?”

  “Tucker nodded his head, “Lemons. Same thing. You wanna stay then?”

  She gave him a defiant look. “Get the tequila. I’ll show you who’s a girly girl. Can my friend hang out too?”

  “The more the merrier. But I don’t think she wants to.”

  Neesha turned around and looked behind her. Els was gone.

  “Shit. Did you see where she went?”

  Tucker pointed back to the direction of their room.

  “Wait right here. I’m going to get her and we’ll be right back.”

  “Yeah, alright. Come back. We’ll be here all night.”

  Neesha walked across the parking lot to their room. She looked back at the guy. Tucker had a liter sized bottle of tequila out, held against his crotch like a giant glass erection, thrusting his hips forward, fucking the open air in front of him while the others laughed. She shook her head.

  Els was inside with the lights on, lying on her bed on top of the covers with her back to the door. She didn’t look up when Neesha walked in.

  Neesha sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Hey.�
�

  “Hey,” said Els, still not looking up.

  “Why’d you run off like that?”

  Els shrugged. “I don’t know. Those guys are jerks. They were all staring at me. At my chest. I just didn’t want to be there.”

  “Oh, they were alright. I mean, they’re assholes for sure, but they didn’t mean anything. Guys are just like that. You can’t just automatically assume they’re all rapists, or whatever.”

  Els finally looked up at her. “I know. I don’t like them creeping on me that way, though. And I don’t see how you can let them leer at you, either. They were slinging Mardi Gras beads around and telling you to take your clothes off. You’re mad at the hotel guy for just doing his job, but when those other guys were treating you like a piece of meat, you were okay with it. I don’t understand.”

  Neesha was taken aback, slightly. This was more than Els had said all day. She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a weird line sometimes, but I don’t think those guys crossed it, really.”

  “Well, I didn’t like it at all, and I don’t like them.”

  “So I guess you don’t want to go back and hang out, then?”

  Els laid back down on the bed again. “No, I don’t. But you can, though. I’ll just stay in here.”

  Neesha sighed, “I can’t let you do that. We’re supposed to be doing this together. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really feel like swimming anymore.”

  At least she won’t be disappointed about the pool. “Uh, I don’t want to either.”

  “We could go to dinner? Like you said earlier.”

  “Yeah. There you go. That could be fun. Let’s do that.”

  Els sat up on the edge of her bed, putting her shoes on. She was smiling now. She stood up. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s do it.”

  Neesha followed her out the door.

  THREE

  Headlights splashed over a crowded parking lot as Neesha turned the Jetta into a nightclub called the Busted Bronco.

  Neesha had had every intention of finding a nice restaurant and relaxing over a leisurely meal with Els. Maybe after seeing how Neesha was going out of her way to accommodate her, Els would loosen up enough to have a normal conversation and the two girls could start to get to know one another. But sometime during their brief expedition through the island, trying to find something that wasn’t a fast food chain or an all-night diner, she had a vision of the future. She saw Els retreating and moping around every time they had an opportunity for human interaction, like she was passive-aggressively holding herself hostage, afraid to commingle because she was an introvert or self-conscious or whatever, and forcing Neesha to appease her out of a misplaced sense of guilt or camaraderie. She didn’t like to think that way; that Els was doing this on purpose, but she kept seeing that smile back in the motel room, that easy smile and how quickly Els bounced up after Neesha told her that they didn’t have to hang out with those guys from Houston. Maybe Neesha was crazy, or maybe just a little resentful that she had to leave behind whatever potential she might have had with Tucker. But that was dumb. He was literally the first guy she had talked to. And those tattoos. Yuk! She didn’t necessarily understand it, but she still felt like Els was manipulating her somehow, and she didn’t like it.

  Neesha decided- perhaps vindictively- that the best course of action would be to set a precedent, to show Els what the rest of the trip would be like: drinking, meeting new people, drinking, indulging in brash inhibition, and Els had better learn to fucking chill out a little bit or she was going to be miserable.

  “This doesn’t look like a restaurant,” said Els, looking out over the parking lot.

  “That’s because it’s not.” Neesha saw an open space and pointed the car toward it.

  “I thought you said we were going to a-”

  Neesha cut her off. “I know what I said. I don’t need instant replay, okay? I wanna go here. I wanna get a drink. I wanna dance. They’ll probably have food in there if you want, but right now that’s a low priority for me. Look, I’ll pay your cover, drinks, food, whatever else you want is on me. I’m going in there and you are more than welcome to come with me. In fact, I really hope you do. I think we’ll have a lot of fun. But I’m not going to force you. You don’t have to go in with me, but I’m not going to let you sit in my car, either, so if you don’t come, you’ll have to wait for me outside or figure out how you’re going to get back to the motel.”

  Els shrank back, a hurt expression on her face. “I wasn’t going to do that. It’s just that. . . well, I’ve never been in a place like this. I’m not even twenty one.”

  “Baby,” said Neesha, “they won’t care about that, not here, not this time of year. We can just walk right on in, I promise. No hassle.”

  Els looked down at her feet. “What if they let you in and not me? Are you still going to leave me?”

  “No, sweetie. I wouldn’t do that if they told you can’t get in. If by some weird coincidence, unlikely as it may be, they won’t allow you inside, then I’m right back out here with you, I promise. You just have to act like you belong there, and remember: all they can do is ask you leave. But they won’t. I can guarantee it. Now, are you ready to go in and tear this motherfucker up, or what?”

  Els nodded slightly, still unsure, but she trusted Neesha.

  They could heard the bass thumping as they walked through the door. There was a heavyset guy on a stool wearing a tight black t-shirt, a thick scar on his head split his crew cut and ended just above his left eye. He clocked the girls as they approached, and Els’ stomach tightened. Neesha pulled some bills from her pocket and passed them to the man. He looked at the money for a second and looked back up at the girls. Els was sure he was going to tell them to fuck off, yell at them or hold them there while he waited to turn them over to the police, but he only nodded, and they went inside.

  It was dark and Els saw a thousand silhouettes moving in jumbled rhythm, lit up in a burst of blue light like a camera flash every time a strobe pulsed. The music was loud and the bass pounded through her body in ripples. The air was stale with cigarette smoke and humid from the hot mass of surging bodies.

  Neesha led them to a table near the back with chairs on one side and a long booth on the other. Els sat down, grateful that she didn’t immediately have to hurl herself into the swell of strange flesh surging like an ocean tide all around her.

  She leaned in close to Els and screamed in her ear, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to come too?”

  Neesha shook her head. “Get us some drinks. I want something with vodka.”

  “Will you be long?” Els screamed over the music but Neesha ignored her. She vanished into the furious sea of bodies, and Els was all alone.

  A waitress came and asked her what she wanted to drink.

  “Do you have food?” Els could barely hear herself. It sounded like she was screaming into a pillow.

  The waitress threw her hands up. Els didn’t understand the gesture. Was the waitress saying no, or was she annoyed that Els was being difficult? Els had no idea. She stared at the waitress, she was in her 50’s probably, with big curly bleached hair, holding a pen and a little notebook, impatient to take her order. Els was deciding it was probably stupid to ask for food in a place like this- she didn’t see anyone else eating- when the waitress shouted at her again, “What do you want to drink?”

  Els though a minute, looking around for Neesha to come back. “Umm. . . seven and seven and umm. . . vodka cranberry.”

  The waitress rolled her eyes and left to get the drinks. Els watched her leave, wondering if she had committed some nightclub faux pas, ordered the wrong kind of drinks or something.

  After a while the waitress came back carrying the drinks on a tray. She put napkins down on the table and sat the drinks on top.

  When she was done she hovered over Els holding the empty tray. Els stared up at her blankly and the waitress gave an annoyed sigh
and left shaking her head.

  Els leaned her head against her fist and looked at the drinks. Beads of condensation crept down the cold glasses in a lazy descent. She took a sip of the seven and seven and sat it back down. She didn’t even want it. She looked around for Neesha again but she was still gone.

  “She wanted you to tip her.”

  Els turned to see that a fat guy had slid up next to her in the booth. He was young, early twenties at the most, he still had the acne of a teenager splattered across his face in red blotches.

  “What?” asked Els, watching the strobe light reflect off the fat guy’s glasses.

  “The waitress,” he said. “She wanted you to tip her. That’s why she was standing there like that. She’s not gonna come back.”

  “Oh,” said Els.

  “I’m Elton.” He stuck out a hand.

  Els shook it reluctantly. “Els.”

  “You don’t like to dance, huh, Els?” He said.

  “Hey, I don’t want to be rude or anything, but my friend is kind of sitting there.”

  “I’ll move. Your friend doesn’t look she’s ready to sit down, though.” He pointed across the dance floor and she saw Neesha grinding her ass against the belt buckle of a tall cowboy type. He had skin-tight jeans, hair down to his shoulders beneath a Stetson. Neesha was drinking out of a long, skinny plastic cup that flared out at the end like the bell of a brass instrument.

  El’s shrugged. “She’s coming back, though.”

  “You don’t look like you’re having a very good time,” said Elton.

  Els turned her head and saw a girl doubled over in the corner, liquid vomit gushing out of her mouth in torrents. Her friend was holding her hair back while two guys laughed and took pictures with their phones. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s a gift. I can always tell when people are miserable, and I would say you’re the most miserable looking person here.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically.

  Elton gave her a playful smile, “I call them like I see them.”

  “That kind of blunt honesty might be endearing to some other girl, but you’re not winning me over with it. Like at all.” Els took another drink of her seven and seven that she didn’t want, just to show him that she was indeed having a good time. Which she wasn’t