by Jaime Clarke
“I get thirty dollars,” she says. That leaves me with the pregnant one, who turns out to be more expensive, fifty bucks.
Thriller tells us to circle the block, and we take out all our money, counting out what we need, putting the rest in the glove box. When we get them in our headlights again, the pregnant one is pointing toward the alley.
“Just stay relaxed,” the master thespian says. “But keep your eyes open.”
Jason’s car reeks of his girlfriend’s perfume, even though it’s been more than an hour since we dropped Sara off, right after we dropped off Jane. Jason and I have sought out common ground with these hookers; it’s where we left off, what we used to do when we were both transfer students at Randolph Prep, outsiders in an exclusive club. Bumping into Jason in the cereal aisle at an Albertsons, it was like yesterday we threw that cup of warm piss on that guy riding his bike home late, or the time we climbed in the fountain at City Hall, stripping and shitting until we had good-size pieces we could pitch. “Hey, batter, batter. He can’t hit, he can’t hit, he can’t hit, swing batter.”
Sure, I felt the old stuff, too. Our jealous rivalry, kept alive in high school more by him than by me, a rivalry that faded the summer of our junior year, when I was selected for a prestigious summer fellowship and he wasn’t. The way he produced Sara as evidence that he had the perfect relationship. I introduced him to Jane too, and I could see in his eyes that he was anxious to size me up, see who’s who.
Thriller and Preggers wave for us to pull in, dancing impatiently in the headlights.
“What should we do?” I ask.
Jason is watching the two hookers, studying them. In situations like these, his mind is a steel trap. “I’m going to give them a scare.”
He flips the headlights out. Thriller and Preggers disappear into the dark and Jason rolls down his window, yelling “Fucking whores” as he pushes the accelerator to the floor, plunging toward the streetlight at the end of the alley.
Jason knows about what happened to me, and I appreciate the way he treats me like it was just yesterday we were two transfer students at Randolph, him from New York and me from nowhere. It’s a good friend who will overlook what other people think about you.
Aztecka
Jason’s bar, Aztecka, is packed, the strobes lighting the massive movement of people on the dance floor. I cross Camelback Road and walk up to the door. An ultra-yuppie couple appears, their noses turned up at the industrialites crowding the dance floor, desecrating their mahogany and green plush carpet. “All I wanted was a kiwi margarita,” the woman says.
It isn’t really Jason’s bar. He’s the manager, and since I’ve been back, I’ve been helping him out on the busy nights.
I’ve always thought the best part of working in a bar, obviously enough, would be meeting women.
The worst part is seeing what people do to each other. A bar is the perfect environment to do real harm to someone you don’t really know.
Miles, the relief bartender, hands me an apron and we face the throng at the bar, two deep. It still takes me a minute to orient myself, but once I do, I feel like I never left La Onda, the bar I tended in Boca Raton, where I went to escape memories of Jenny and ended up finding Karine.
I’m making four or five drinks at once while having two or three more orders shouted at me, and suddenly I hear a whack and then it seems like everyone freezes and I see this guy and this girl and the girl is holding the side of her face and she’s begging him not to leave her there and that’s when I notice another girl waiting off to the side, impatiently, and the first girl is in tears, blubbering. I hear the guy say, “If you won’t do it, she will.” I look over at the girl to see if she really will, and our gazes lock and I can’t make myself look away. The first girl’s pleading becomes pathetic and she starts convulsing; her voice crescendoes and everyone is listening but the guy doesn’t realize it and he smacks her across the face again. I start in the direction of the guy and he faces me, scowling. The showdown. I reach under the bar, go for an invisible bat, and he sees this and grabs the girl-in-waiting and cuts through the crowd to the door.
There’s a hum and then the bar is at 140 decibels, the noise swallowing the girlfriend who is left standing in the corner, holding her face. People are screaming for their drinks, but I ignore them and call out to the girl. I wave a drunk guy off his stool and motion for her to sit.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Clearly embarrassed, she just nods.
“What was that all about?” I ask.
“Can I have a drink?” she asks.
“Sure. What do you want?”
“Just water.”
I hand her a glass of water and she takes a sip and sets it back down on the bar.
“Want to talk about it?” I ask, feeling like I can really help her, but she just shakes her head and asks me to call her a cab.
When the cab arrives, I search the bar for her, and just as I’m about to shrug at the cabdriver waiting in the doorway, the girl emerges from the bathroom. I wave, trying to get her attention, but she isn’t looking at me. Instead she turns away and heads to the pool room in the back. I signal the cabdriver to stay where he is, and go after her.
I find the girl leaning against one of the pool tables, and when I walk up to her, she gets a strange look on her face like she wonders who I am. Her boyfriend is back and he comes up to me. “What do you want?” he asks, sneering.
“Your cab is here,” I say to the girl.
“I don’t need it,” she says, turning away.
“The driver’s waiting out front,” I tell her, trying to persuade her to go home, where she’ll be safe.
“Look, I already said I didn’t want it. Are you deaf?” She scowls at me, and now her boyfriend moves in closer and I consider throwing him out, but I begin to feel a shift in loyalties on the girl’s part and I turn and start to walk away. A hand grabs my arm and I whirl around, ready to deck the asshole, but it’s the girl and she asks me: “Do you know where we can score some smack?”
I’m still hearing the girl’s question when I’m back behind the bar, not so much the words, but how she asked it. Sometimes you can mistake unhappiness for despair.
Monday
Jane gets me into helping people and it turns out I’m a natural.
The first deal didn’t turn out so well: I guess I’m not great with children.
I had been volunteering with Jane at the crisis nursery for only about a week when I hurt someone (it was an accident). I was playing along fine with the kids, running around and screaming, in and out of the miniature wood house, an old set piece from some play, donated by a local theater company. I had chased some kids into the house, ducking into the tiny front room, where the kids were pressed one on top of the other in the corner. I pretended like I was going to really get them, and this little Mexican kid started kicking me in the leg. I yelled at him to stop, which made the kids laugh, and this little Mexican kid kept doing it until I put my hand on his head and pushed him back against the wall.
Of course there was a big stink about who did what. The little Mexican kid accused me of hitting him. I said the little Mexican kid fell. I said I was sorry about it. I said I felt bad. I think they believed me, but I didn’t get to help out at the nursery anymore.
I told Jane this story (minus what I did to the Mexican kid), and she suggested I volunteer for the March of Dimes Bowl-A-Rama, which turned out to be a right-on suggestion.
“Thanks for coming,” Katherine said.
“Glad to help out,” I said grandly.
“We’ve got several volunteers for today,” Katherine said. “If you like it, maybe you’ll think about staying on.”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll see.”
I was assigned to a girl named Janice. Janice couldn’t talk very well and walked like she might pitch forward or backward, depending on how you looked at her. And she couldn’t stop smiling.
Janice seemed to like me right away, and I
helped her with her bowling. The March of Dimes had these special ramps set up in front of the lanes that looked like slides at the water park.
“Like this,” I said, showing Janice how to put her fingers in the holes and lift the ball up onto the ramp. Janice watched the ball roll down, picking up speed, until it thumped in the lane and slowly rolled toward the pins.
Janice clapped wildly as the ball veered into the gutter, grounding past the upright pins.
“You try it,” I suggested, and she said something unintelligible.
She lifted the ball with both hands and loaded it onto the ramp. “Like this,” she said.
“Good job, Janice,” I said. Her ball guttered, and we both stood wondering what to do next.
“Watch,” I said, pushing the ramp to the side. I took up a ball and let it fly down the lane.
“Wheeeeee!” Janice screamed. Everyone looked over, and I thought for a minute I might get into trouble, but the sound of the pins crashing into one another brought cheers and applause from the others, and I just smiled blankly at everyone.
“Are you my brother?” Janice asked.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’re my brother,” she said.
I didn’t know what to do, and Janice started pawing at me in a surprisingly lewd manner. I stepped back and Katherine rushed up.
“Sorry,” Katherine said. “She thinks all men are her brother.”
“Oh,” I said.
Janice ignored us and picked up another bowling ball, peering into it as if it were a mirror.
“Where is her brother?” I asked hesitantly.
“He’s in jail,” Katherine said.
“Really?”
“He molested her.”
I nodded my head like I understood, because I didn’t really know what else to do. The information didn’t mean anything to me—I had just met Janice and I didn’t know her brother and I was pretty sure her brother’s molesting her hadn’t made Janice handicapped. Mostly I felt like I couldn’t really do anything for Janice even though I knew this about her.
I was sulking about what a crappy person I probably was when Katherine said, “She thinks all men are her brother, so she thinks it’s okay for all men to do to her what her brother did.”
Janice began dropping balls right onto the lane, one after another, clapping madly at their dull thumps.
Katherine lunged to stop her.
I thought about men taking advantage of Janice.
I wondered if I would.
I wondered if I knew anyone who would.
I could picture several.
Essay #2: I Touch Clouds
All the boys in high school thought my neighbor Talie was pretty, and they all tried to get dates with her. She wasn’t as pretty as some of the cheerleaders, but those girls only had what you saw. With Talie, boys knew she felt things most girls didn’t, and they wanted to feel them too.
Talie had natural grace. When I wanted to learn how to dance for the Christmas formal, Talie volunteered to help. We would practice in her foster parents’ living room, the coffee table standing awkwardly on its end, pushed in the corner to make more space. We pretended we were at a grand ball, hooking up arm in arm in the kitchen doorway, entering the room stride for stride and turning to each other. I bowed and she curtsied.
“Not too fast,” Mrs. Chandler, her foster mother, would say, marking the time by slapping her hand against her leg.
Talie moved majestically and I tried to follow, becoming lost in the way she looked directly into my eyes before she dipped me. My head went right for the floor until I thought I would bring us both down, but her arm would catch, saving me, bringing me back up, making me look graceful too. Talie would spin me out, away from her, and I would rotate like a satellite, pulled back in by her gravity.
“Not too fast,” Talie said. “You’re hurting me.”
I eased up.
“Don’t stop,” she said. “Just don’t go so fast.”
I remember the pain and fear I would feel when I would come while masturbating, but with Talie, things felt different. Her breath was warm and touching her was like running your fingers along clouds.
“Doesn’t it feel good?” she would ask.
“I’m going to come,” I said, warning her.
“Shit,” she said, stopping suddenly. “I don’t want to get pregnant.”
Talie climbed off and lay on her side, facing me. I felt her fingers on me, moving back and forth, and I did the same for her. We came out of sync, me first, then her. She cupped her hand to keep me from making a mess on the sheets. I watched her lean over the sink in the bathroom as she scrubbed her hands.
Most of the time she would just come over and ask me to. We wouldn’t kiss on the mouth or anything corny like that. She would just say she wanted to, and I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t want to. I’d just ask if the coast was clear, and she would nod and lock the door.
“You’re learning,” Mrs. Chandler said.
It didn’t matter that no one at the formal would dance.
I was glad.
I didn’t want to show anyone what Talie had shown me.
From the Deep End
Jason wants to come in and say hi, but I tell him it’s better if he drops me at the front gate. “I haven’t seen JSB in forever,” he says.
“Maybe next time,” I say, and he gets it.
I wait until Jason is out of sight to punch in my gate code. I’m surprised that it still works and the heavy metal gate rolls back on its track, retracting behind the concrete walls of Arrowhead Ranch.
The red Land Cruiser that JSB is going to loan me is parked in the far corner of the driveway. If I could jump into the Land Cruiser and drive away, I would.
Heading up the back walkway, I kick through an overgrown row of birds of paradise, their orangish flowers drooping and rotting. The upright arm of the giant saguaro outside the back kitchen window has rotted too, and it rests elbow-out at the top of the walkway. Weeds sprout up through the graveled cactus beds underneath the picture windows.
I knock on the back door. Through the kitchen window I see a pizza box next to an empty plastic pitcher of iced tea on the cutting block in the middle of the kitchen. I consider going around to the front, to where the bell is, but knock again, harder, until JSB shuffles into the kitchen, sees me, and smiles.
He opens the door with considerable effort, and a stiff foulness rises to my nose when he opens his arms, a smile somewhere deep within him barely visible on his face.
“When?” he asks.
“While you were in Canada,” I say apologetically.
JSB nods. “Was there any trouble there?” he asks.
I shake my head no. “They were fine,” I say.
“I told them to call me if there was—”
“There wasn’t,” I say.
We sit at the rattan kitchen table, and JSB reaches for an invisible glass, looks back toward the refrigerator and then at me, leaning comfortably in his chair.
“Did Talie tell you?” he asks.
“That you fired your landscapers?” I ask, smiling.
JSB glances out the window and snorts. “Buckley Cosmetics is going to file for bankruptcy,” he tells me.
I lean back in my chair, stunned. I know so little about the world that I didn’t know it was possible for a company to file for bankruptcy twice in its corporate life. The trauma of the previous bankruptcy, when I first came to work for JSB and Buckley, was easily summoned.
“We’re so far in the red we need the protection,” he says matter-of-factly. “We were hoping the new line of cosmetics would save us, but the development has been delayed by at least six months and the banks won’t cooperate anymore.”
“Can’t you take a personal loan?” I ask. I can’t remember when I’d last offered advice to anyone. For the first time in a long time I feel like I am really helping someone.
“My credit lines are overextended,” he says,
shrugging.
I’m turning it over, trying to come up with the solution, when there’s laughter on the walkway. I look out the window, but JSB sits still in his chair, not turning when the door opens and a woman—a girl, really—who looks like Victoria, JSB’s girlfriend when I left for Boca Raton, blond and honey-kissed, but who is not Victoria, saunters in with an embarrassed dark-haired kid no more than eighteen in tow. “Hi,” she says, kissing JSB lightly on his graying hair.
JSB smiles and fingers the pepper shaker on the table.
“We want to use the pool,” the girl says. “Is that all right?”
“Sure,” JSB says. “Help yourself.”
The two disappear as quickly as they arrived, and JSB gets up, motioning for me to follow.
“Thanks for loaning me the vehicle,” I say.
We’re in front of the smoked-glass picture window overlooking the pool. JSB drags over a couple of chairs and we sit.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Erin,” JSB answers.
“How long have you been seeing her?”
“Six months,” he says, sighing.
If a woman in JSB’s life lasts six months, it’s like ten years in a regular relationship. The six-month anniversary at Arrowhead Ranch usually calls for a locksmith and a reprogramming of the front gate.
“Where is Talie?” I ask, looking toward the end of the house, in the direction of her bedroom.
“I haven’t seen her,” JSB says, not taking his eyes off the pool, where Erin and Erin’s friend are pushing a volleyball back and forth across the water’s surface. “I’ve been thinking of making Erin … permanent.”
“Really?” I’m as surprised as I was when JSB called from Atlanta when I was seventeen, freshly emancipated, working for JSB as a corporate runner for Buckley Cosmetics—a job Talie helped me get—and told me he was engaged to his high school sweetheart, whom he’d met up with again. By the time his plane landed in Phoenix a week later, there was no mention of the high school sweetheart, and the whole episode remains an aberrant dream among the very real personalities of the women he’s been with before and since.