The Girl On The Half Shell

by Susan Ward

  His eyes flare and widen. “I’m repulsed by her. Why would you ask me that?”

  “Someone told me you did. She’s my best friend, Alan. How could you do that and think it wouldn’t matter later to me?”

  He sits back and runs a hand through his hair, confused and angry. “Is that what that bitch told you? No. Never. I did not fuck Rene.”

  “It wasn’t Rene who told me. Apparently everyone knows you did it in the bathroom at The Blue Light. It’s funny how everyone always seems to know everything you do.”

  “Well then it’s news to me because it didn’t happen,” he growls, his gaze so intense, his expression so open I nearly believe him.

  “Are you saying that you didn’t take her into the bathroom for a fast screw?”

  “I’m saying I didn’t fuck her in the bathroom at the club,” he grounds out. “You were loaded and she was too absorbed in herself to give a damn if something happened to you. I took her to a bathroom and I got in her face and made her take you home. And that’s the end of what happened, and if she tells you otherwise she’s a liar.”

  I can barely breathe because I know he’s telling me the truth. I can also feel the power he wields over me, how my traitorous emotions pitch and chase after him.

  He starts to pace the room, and I can feel his body pulsing with anger. “The bullshit always fucks everything up, Chrissie. I can’t stop the bullshit and you’re going to have to learn not to listen to it. I have always told you the truth. I will always tell you the truth.”

  “How many girls have you been with?”

  God, why did I bring that up again?

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?” He takes a sharp breath, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck, give me a notepad. I’ll write down names, whatever I can remember. Do you want positions, too? Christ, Chrissie, why does any of this matter?”

  I look around the room.

  “Don’t bother,” I whisper. “Better question. Why did you screw me in a bedroom and dump me last night? You wanted to humiliate me last night. Why did you want to hurt me?”

  His eyes widen with pain and almost tortured reluctance. “I didn’t like that you wanted to be with him instead of with me,” he admits after a long while.

  “I didn’t want to be with him. I just didn’t want to be at the party. Your reaction was completely irrational. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of that. What did I do that was so awful that you would want to deliberately hurt me?”

  He’s frustrated again. I can tell he doesn’t want to answer, and he doesn’t like the direction I’m taking this.

  “Lillian was a very popular actress in her day and the biggest whore in London, Chrissie,” he says through gritted teeth. “I didn’t even know who my father was until I was eighteen and he died. Lillian gifted me with the truth and a trust fund, as if everything would be fine. I knew him my entire life and never once did he acknowledge me. I didn’t have a clue he was my dad.”

  He turns away from me and I can see something powerful coursing through him. “My father was Vittorio Manzone.”

  My eyes round in surprise. “The Italian tenor?”

  He nods.

  He stares down at me. “You hit a nerve, Chrissie, not wanting to be seen with me, and I fucked up. I’m still working through some things. You have to be patient with me. I’m doing my best here.”

  “I don’t think your best works for me, Alan,” I whisper with more injury in my voice than I want to show.

  “I’m doing my best,” he repeats, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m being honest with you, I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone, and if you were anyone else I wouldn’t be here or trust being honest.”

  I change course. “I’m not staying in New York any longer. I have to go home.”

  He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move.

  “You are not leaving, Chrissie.”

  He leans in to kiss me and I inch back instinctively. If he touches me I will crumble. I pull farther back.

  “You need to go.” I’m proud of how my voice sounds this time. Calm. In control. Firm.

  “What? No.” He eases back from me, blinking. “No, I’m not leaving until we’ve worked this out.”

  “There is nothing to work out.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You’re not good for me.”

  “How can you say that? We are good for each other,” he says in desperation. “I am completely lost in you and that’s a good place to be, Chrissie. A very good place to be.”

  I look away from him again. I am lost in you too, Alan, and I’m not sure if that is a good place to be. I feel the tears. I grab a tissue. I hate that I’m crying, that I couldn’t hold it back until he was gone.

  I stare about the room. I’m so tired. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want Alan to leave. I want to curl up in bed, cry, and then fall asleep next to him. But I can’t forgive him. Not after last night. I need to send him away.

  “When will you send my things over?”

  “Never. You’re not going.”

  He sinks down on the sofa beside me. I can suddenly see how tired he is. It feels so very right to have him close to me. “I love you. I don’t want to fight. Please, don’t leave.”

  “You hurt me.”

  He swallows. “I love you.”

  He inhales sharply, lies his head back against the cushion and closes his eyes. He looks so despondent, so weary, and so young. It’s so unfair that he can shift effortlessly into someone who melts my heart. It makes me want to curl into him, hold him, even after the horrible things he’s done.

  “I’m so tired, Chrissie. Tired of the bullshit. Tired of everything. I just want one thing in my life not drowning in shit. I just want to be with you and be happy, be with you and let all the other fucking shit go.”

  His lids lift just enough so he can look at me. Gently, he tugs my hand from beneath me, where I’d buried it so he couldn’t take it. He places a feather-light kiss in my palm.

  “Can we just go to sleep and finish this later, Chrissie?” He sets my teacup on the table. “Never argue when you’re tired. It’s not good. And I won’t be able to sleep unless you are next to me.”

  I hesitate. Alan picks me up and carries me to my bedroom.

  * * *

  Reluctantly, I open my eyes. I don’t want to wake. I don’t want round two of the fighting. I don’t want to end us. And I don’t think I should go any farther with Alan. I’m at a point where I can exit. Only I don’t want to exit, though I know deep down I should.

  I check the clock. It is 10 p.m. We’ve slept fifteen hours straight, and I have not moved from the tight ball on the edge of the bed where I deposited myself after Alan released me. I didn’t argue with him about postponing our fight or lying down with him to sleep, but I wasn’t about to lay down with him as if everything were normal. I don’t know where we are, but we are not in normal. Not that we are ever in normal, not really, not in the way I used to think normal would be. Alan and I together are a lot of things. Normal just isn’t one of them.

  I carefully turn to look at him. I want to get up, but I don’t want to wake him. He is wrapped around me in that warm, surrounding way that feels as though he is holding onto me, even in sleep. His flesh is warm. His breathing is quiet.

  How do I get out of here without waking him? I need a little distance so I can think through what I should do.

  Suddenly, my panties are gone and I am pressed into Alan in a perfect, side-by-side fit, and he is in me without foreplay or stirring touch or kisses. He’s just in me and this is different. It feels dark and angry as he slams into me, filling me, even more so than it did being pounded against the bedroom door.

  His groans are different. His touch is different. His fingers on my breasts are different, the way those callused tips roll my nipples, tugging and pinching. He is something beyond angry, I can feel it, and I close my eyes, absorbing him, part afraid, a greater part hungrily savoring. The sensations
through my flesh push me higher, too quickly, so right.

  He grasps my hip firmly, eases out of me slowly, and then again, harder this time, slams into me.

  “Don’t ever leave me.”

  I lie panting beneath his touch, feeling his intense anger, knowing he’s going to get rougher. My femaleness courses through my veins. It is messed up, but my insides quicken, excited by my femaleness and his temper.

  I’m about to surrender to the heat of my own flesh. A ragged whisper penetrates my near exploding senses.

  “Did you fuck him?”

  What? No! My senses halt in their march toward climax.

  “Did you fuck him?” he repeats fiercely.

  He stays still.

  “No,” I hiss furiously, the shock of him asking me that leaving me breathless and flashing with anger. “No.”

  He closes his eyes, there is a ragged shudder through his limbs, and the feel of him is different, frenzied and possessive. He starts again, a brutal, divine rhythm. I hear his groan, a guttural thing, desperation, relief, sadness. He moans low in his throat and I can feel the tension change, as his adrenaline runs through his veins, a different type of current.

  “I’ve been out of my mind since you walked out the door with him,” he breathes, his face buried in my hair. “Don’t do that again. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t make me feel like I don’t matter to you. I can stand anything, Chrissie, except not mattering to you.”

  And then the words are lost. Alan is letting go, calling my name, and I surrender and explode with him. I sink to the bed. I sleep.

  * * *

  Alan gazes at me, assessing my expression as I stare up at him.

  It’s morning and I don’t have a clue where we go from here. Last night was different. I don’t know what is happening beneath his surface, but there is something and I can feel it. I should be furious that in the cease-fire between the rounds of our fight, he decided to have an extremely rough “did you fuck him” fuck.

  His anger issues. I’ve seen them, but last night I felt it in his body, in the way he had sex with me. Did I fuck him? God, Alan, how could you ask me that?

  I try to rally my anger, fortification for today’s round of fighting, but I’m slightly disappointed in myself. I realize that I am less angry with him because I really got off on the angry “did you fuck him” fuck. It was weird, consuming, and a turn-on.

  His anger is dark, complex and layered, just like mine. But unlike me, he lets it surface, in his music, in his impulses, and in his body when he fucks instead of making love. Maybe that was why it was a turn on? I fight my anger, I struggle to keep it contained, but last night my anger ran with his through my flesh and it was a sensory right sort of thing.

  I stare at him. So what’s up today, Alan? Are we going to continue talking? Are we going to continue having angry fucks? Or are you just going to lie there staring at me as though everything is fine, perfectly normal in this alternate universe of not normal.

  “Do you want to go on a date-date today?” Alan asks.

  Oh crap, how did he remember that? Date-date. How lame.

  He starts to move my hair from my face. “I owe you a date-date.”

  So, it’s going to be door number three: act like everything is fine. What do I do? Do I roll with it? What did Jesse say? Guys hate conflict. Act normal and so will he. But is that what I want? To act normal and just leave it all alone?

  I don’t answer.

  He climbs from the bed, naked, and completely comfortable in whatever we’re doing now.

  I sit up in bed against the pillows.

  Alan is sorting through his clothes on the floor. “Are you hungry?”

  Normal conversation in not normal context. I take a deep breath, willing myself calm.

  “I’m starving. We didn’t eat yesterday.”

  He gives me a look that makes me quicken all through my flesh.

  “Do you have any clothes here other than the shorts and UGGs? Maybe jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and some kind of closed toe shoe?”

  Why is he asking me this? “I don’t know. I’ll have to look. Rene left a lot of junk.”

  He makes a face and continues to rummage through his things.

  I frown. “How did you get into the apartment yesterday?”

  “I have a key.”

  You do, do you? I stare.

  “You left the extra key on the entry table.” He is distracted and looking for something. “Not smart, Chrissie. Anyone could have just come in here, a delivery person, taken it, and then where would you be?”

  It’s not worth pointing out, but just anyone did take it and look at where I am. With you, Alan, sore after a night of angry fucking.

  I watch Alan disappear into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on. He doesn’t ask, he takes my hand and pulls me into the shower with him.

  As I stand beneath the warm streams, his damp body pressed against my back, his gentle hands wash me from behind. “Did you ever finish Ivanoff?”

  Oh, Alan, why are you so weird? I shake my head. “You could always give me the Cliff Notes really fast.”

  He smiles. His chin rests on my shoulder and he continues washing me, and his voice, so sexy, makes it arousing to do this, even listening to a brief synopsis of Chekhov.

  By the time we’re toweling off, I’m kind of wishing he’d just take me back to bed. Sexy Alan was a turn-on, even reciting Chekhov, but it’s probably not a good idea. I’m sorer than I thought and I could feel it when he touched me there, even lightly while washing me.

  I make a face at him, since he used my toothbrush without asking, and I pat my face dry with a towel.

  He is already fully dressed when I join him in the bedroom.

  I’m pulling on my panties and bra. “You know, you can only be useful in my study of literature if you tell me how the play ends.”

  Alan is sitting on the bed waiting for me, as I rummage through Rene’s clothing. I look at him, and for some reason the complete lack of emotion on his face turns me cold.

  “Ivanoff runs off stage and shoots himself in the head.”

  Oh Alan, what’s going on with you? Why did you bring up Ivanoff today?

  * * *

  After Alan makes me breakfast, I set off to try and accommodate his clothing specifications. No matter how I try, I can’t make any of Rene’s clothes work. She is a lot taller than I am and has a leaner, less curvy build. We can share tops, an occasional skirt, but that’s about it. Jeans, never an option. And shoes, not even worth trying, since Rene definitely doesn’t have any that are closed toe.

  I go down the hallway to Jack’s bedroom and into my parents’ closet. Lena’s things are still hanging here, in perfect order, where they have been since that day she left New York for California permanently. A lump swells in my throat as I stare at her neatly arranged wardrobe. Twelve years and Jack hasn’t cleaned out her things. I never gave a thought to it, but it is all still here.

  Alan comes into sharp focus in my mind, as I rummage through the cedar-lined drawers. I am lost in him. I have become lost in him so quickly, so quickly that he could end us in a humiliatingly public way and then I would spend the night in angry fucking wanting to please him.

  I shake my head to push away my thoughts. Jeans. Closed toe shoes. I have only a few options with my mother’s clothing. Lena was not the casual type, and what she has left behind in the casual department was New York chic in 1977. The only positive is that we are nearly the same size, though Mom was taller.

  I settle on a cute pair of dark, denim overalls that I can make work by rolling the cuffs. The long sleeve shirt is a baggy beach-type thermal of Jack’s. The shoes are bucks-up buckskin ankle high hiking boots that never saw a trail or dirt. They are spotless twelve years later and I wonder why Lena even has them.

  A camping trip? A hike? Something planned to please Jack, but never done. Yes, that was my mother. She definitely knew how to please him without ever doing anything she didn’t want to do. Mom w
as highly competent at being female and in loving Jack.

  I stare at myself in the mirror. Today, I look like an incompetent girl. All I need is braids. How lame is this outfit?

  Crossing into my bedroom, I hold my arms wide. “Well, what do you think? Have I managed the wardrobe specifications? And what’s up with that, anyway? Who cares what I wear?”

  Alan smiles. He kisses me. “You will.”

  “I will, will I?” I notice he is carrying Jack’s old leather bomber jacket atop his own leather jacket that I didn’t even notice him wearing yesterday when he arrived.

  “Tie back your hair,” he orders, waits, and then tosses a bandana at me. “And put this on. It will help.”

  “Help what?”

  “Hurry up, Chrissie. We need to roll.”

  * * *

  In the parking garage, I freeze and just stare at him. It took Alan three hours to go six blocks and he did it on motorcycle? These clothes now make sense.

  “I am not getting on that thing,” I protest, pulling my hand free from his.

  Alan ignores me. He zips up Jack’s bomber jacket, tugs my collar high and pulls up the bandana until my nostrils and mouth are tucked in.

  “I am not riding on that. Where are we going?”

  He swings his leg over, turns the ignition and primes the engine with gas. He points. “Get up behind me. Put your feet there. Whatever you do, don’t let go of my body.”

  I hate motorcycles. I’m more afraid of them than airplanes, and jeez, he’s got me sitting on the back of one.

  Alan laughs. “Don’t worry. Neither of us is twenty-seven.”

  I raise my eyebrows. An obscure literary reference they don’t teach in California, most probably, but I don’t get the joke.

  “The great ones die at twenty-seven,” he explains glibly. “Hendrix. Joplin. If we are both around after we’re twenty-seven, we’ll both know what we are.”

  I could have done without it being cryptic. Don’t mock death, Alan, it’s not funny. I snuggle into him closer. I press my cheek against his back and hold him tight.

  “Good girl.”