by K W Taylor
She didn’t think wrong, not really. I did want this. For weeks and months I’ve wanted this or something like it, a something bad, something dangerous. If it was with Carrie or Christy, great. But if not, somebody else would’ve come along, and the outcome would’ve still been the same.
We fuck in the backseat of the tiny car, and then she’s careful to drop me back home a block from my building—no, not just mine, our building, mine and Deb’s, the building where I’ll have to slide my shitty, guilt-ridden self into bed beside somebody I just cheated on.
I shower first. It’s not “rabbit rabbit” day anymore, I realize. That expired even before I found my flat. I can’t blame this on Deb winning a stupid game, I can’t blame this on anything but my heart and my soul and my own goddamn self.
“Rabbit rabbit,” I murmur as I kiss the back of her neck. She stirs, pushes her back against my front, our legs cupping around each other perfectly, comfortably, together-ly. Like we’re still us and we’re still safe and good and nobody has fucked this all up to pieces of shit. That nobody being me.
“Rabbit rabbit.” Her voice is sleepy and languid, silk on polished wood.
Come morning, she asks why my pillow’s wet. I lie and say I must’ve drooled. Come morning, I take the bus to work and never tell her the car’s still in the lot there. Come morning and the next and the next and the next seven thousand mornings, I never tell her a thing, never tell her as I propose, never tell her as we sign papers at the courthouse, never tell her when it’s our decade anniversary and beyond. And yet…
When the kid is at our doorstep and when he tells her he’s mine, she’s not shocked.
She greets me with a stern face but no tears, no shocked expression or chagrin. Just cold resignation. Lots of sighing, lots of nervous knuckle cracking and throat clearing.
“Who was she?” she asks when the kid’s gone back home.
Since I made it a point to erase Carrie or Christy from my life completely, at first I can’t even remember her face. “She didn’t matter,” I say, and it’s true. She didn’t matter. But Deb didn’t matter enough back then, and that was the problem. I’ve made myself make her matter more ever since. Forced it. Clung to it.
Deb matters. My wife matters.
I chant it in my head like a mantra while she stares at me.
“We’re done.” She pulls off her gold band and puts it in my palm. Her things are gone soon. And that’s when I knew I didn’t matter enough, we didn’t matter enough. We had our game, and that was it between us. One inconsequential silly thing shared does not a life make.
“What’s your name?” I ask my son. Freakishly, I think of Updike and panic.
“Todd.”
“She named you after me.”
“Seems so.”
Shitty thing to do to a fatherless kid. “Sorry I didn’t know you existed.”
He shrugs. Eats a pickle.
“Gonna make it up to you.”
“Mom says your wife left ‘cause of me.”
“Not because of you,” I say. “Because of what I did to make you.”
Another shrug. I was an apathetic bastard at his age, so it doesn’t bug me. These things will matter to him someday but they don’t matter now. It’s cool.
“Are you mad she’s gone?” he asks. “Are you sad?”
“I’m happy to know you,” I say.
“Yeah, but…”
Am I mad? Sad? Glad?
“I dunno,” I admit.
French fries. Shrugs. The café is playing crummy old tunes from my college days. It’s bizarre to look into a little mirror of my face while hearing bands I used to mosh to.
Sip of coffee. A redhead walks by the picture window. Not Carrie or Christy, but close. My heart plunges into my shoes, and I start to cry.
REGRESSION
A curtain at the rear of the tent parted. Out stepped a lanky man in his mid-forties. He had a scraggly goatee. His hair was swept back into a short ponytail. “Ah, you returned,” he said.
“I brought a friend,” Denae said, shoving Chrissy forward.
“Chill, woman!” Chrissy barked, barely keeping her balance. “Denae, you are super rude.”
The man flashed a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and held out his hand to the table. “Please, have a seat, ladies,” he said. “Your friend is encouraging you to learn a bit about yourself?”
Denae climbed atop a cushion in the corner of the tent and pulled out her cell phone as Chrissy sat down at the table across from the man.
“I guess,” Chrissy said, shrugging. “You told her she was a Persian princess or something?”
The man nodded. “Not everyone learns they were royalty, though.”
Chrissy snorted. “Oh, please, if she’s royalty, I know I am.” She whirled around to regard Denae over her shoulder. “I mean, hello, which one of us made cheer captain? Oh, right, not you!”
The man sighed. “I can only help you if you take this seriously.”
Chrissy shrugged again. “Hey, I’ll try anything once. I dated a Mathlete last year. What do I do?”
“Just place your hands on the table like this,” he said, demonstrating. Chrissy mirrored his movements.
“Marilyn Monroe, I bet,” she chirped. “Dude, I bet I was totally Marilyn Monroe in my past life.”
The man closed his eyes. His breathing became deeper. “I see you on a street at nighttime.” He smirked, his eyes still closed. “Your clothing is quite fashionable. I imagine you would appreciate that.”
“Darn right,” Chrissy said. “Hear that, D? I was always hot.”
Denae looked up from her cell phone. “Hotter than a princess? Unlikely.”
“Whatever, hater,” Chrissy said. She turned her attention back to the man. “I was a movie star, wasn’t I?”
The man frowned. “I believe this is a period prior to the motion picture era.”
“Then I’m probably some awesome socialite in the olden days.”
Suddenly, the man gasped, and his eyes flew open. He looked from Chrissy to Denae and back again. “We must stop.” He rose, fumbling around the table to the rear of the tent, and then disappeared behind a curtain.
Chrissy pouted. “Not fair!” she called after the man.
“Eh, we didn’t pay him,” Denae said. “Sorry I wasted your time, Chris. We can find the guys and do the bumper cars if you want.” She got up from her cushion and slid her cell phone back into her pocket.
“I’m not leaving.” Chrissy folded her arms across her chest. “You talked me into coming here to find out about my past life, and I’m not going until he tells me what the deal is.”
Denae frowned. “You’re always stubborn in whatever way will annoy me most,” she said. “Fine. Text me when you’re done.” She flounced out of the tent.
Chrissy stood up and poked at the curtain through which the man had retreated. “Psychic dude?” she called. “Come on! I need to know what you saw!”
Getting no response, she batted the curtain away and stepped outside. Chrissy spotted the man a few yards off, just to the right of the main midway, buying a coffee from a vendor.
“Hey!” She started to span the gap between them, her heels turning up divots of spring mud behind her. Even as she approached him, Chrissy wondered what she was doing. The guy was a carnie, after all, and he was old. Why bother chasing after an answer when she’d never cared about the question before?
Because nobody ignores the student council president, she thought. Because I’m somebody, and I don’t get treated like this, even from a fake psychic crazy person!
“Dude, I’ll pay you no matter what you tell me!” she insisted.
The man leaned over, his face red. “You do not want to know,” he said, his expression grave. “Miss, trust me. Please.”
“I don’t care if I wasn’t a princess. But you saw me wearing nice clothes! It can’t be all that bad!”
The man looked her up and down and sighed. “Fine. You want to know? I
see girls like you all the time, town after town. Girls with cruel streaks and ambition and pettiness. But I have never seen a girl like you have such a dark past.” He shook his head. “You were someone special, all right,” the man went on. “Dressed in your finest suit, you walked the streets of London on foggy nights making quite the name for yourself.”
Chrissy felt something like déjà vu tugging at her, and she imagined a Victorian gentleman approaching a shabbily-dressed woman. She could almost see white-gloved fingers tap the brim of a top hat, then the flash of a small silver blade across the woman’s throat.
“You feel yourself in competition with your friends, girls like the Persian princess,” the man said. “But there is more to that competitiveness.” He gave her a steely look. “At least you were clever enough to never get caught.”
As his words sank in, Chrissy began to smile. “I was somebody,” she said. “And this time, I’ll be somebody, too.”
“I hope this time will be less bloody.”
Chrissy beamed at him. “We’ll see.”
sanguine
“Did you keep a dream journal this week?”
“I don’t dream.” Pointless. The same questions. The same answers.
“What about your affirmations?”
This she wants to dismiss, too, but Rebecca can’t quite admit that looking at herself in the mirror is hard, that saying nice things about herself aloud is painful. That she did do her affirmations that morning and that it made her cry.
I’m on the cover of an international magazine this month but I hate myself, she wants to sob. But she doesn’t. She just says, “Yes, I did them,” and lets the appointment wind down to nothing.
On her way out, she sees herself briefly, a tiny blur in the glass doors of the office suite.
The bed’s black cotton sheets are rumpled, and a head of tousled dark hair peeks out. She breathes softly, her back rising and falling. On the wicker nightstand rests a rotary telephone, with a bell that now rattles loud enough to wake the dead. She is startled, huge eyes blinking at the cruel morning light.
“Hello?” Fist grinds into eyes. A yawn. “No, you didn’t wake me up.”
A man’s voice on the other end. “Rebecca, my dear one, I have a gig for you.”
An address. Time. A few minor details. “Thank you, sir.”
“Darling, how many times have I asked you to call me Heath?”
She blanches. “Sorry, Heath,” she says.
When she hangs up, she springs out of bed, a lithe little nude figure, ribs and hipbones poking out too far. She leaps around the room to music playing in her head, happily imagining the day ahead.
Mornings were better than evenings.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, this one will do quite nicely.” Rebecca stands self-consciously in an evening gown, out of her element, but brimming with expectation. The tall, cadaverous blond man circles her as he nods his approval. “Mm hm, yes, quite nice, quite nice.” Abruptly he motions to a nearby assistant. “Quick with the Nikon, boy, we’ve got to get her while she’s fresh.”
“Right away, Evan.”
Other lackeys set up the lights, the backdrop, and a fur-covered seat where Evan gestures. “Go there, ah...” He snaps his fingers at Rebecca. She offers her name, and he laughs.
“Certainly, yes, right, but I won’t ever remember it.” The chuckle that follows is low and vaguely disconcerting.
She is draped over the chair, doing a good job of feigning seductiveness. It isn’t as hard as she thinks, because Evan provides ample inspiration. Her eyes trail down his shirt, buttons open revealing a whisper of hair on a bony pink chest.
And then the shoot is wrapping up, and Rebecca is forgotten amidst packing up and preparing to leave. She watches Evan from afar as he chats with hangers-on and hands off his camera to be put away. She is wearing a nondescript brown sweater and baggy jeans now, and she figures he doesn’t recognize her as she passes him to leave.
“Great job, Rebecc-er.”
She whirls around. Evan is grinning at her, pointy teeth stained with tea and tobacco.
“Oh, thank you.” She’s blushing. He continues to smile at her.
A messenger with a contract for him approaches with a “Mr. Blandovend, this is from Ford,” and Evan’s attention is diverted from Rebecca. Her eyes drift back down to the floor, and she slips down and out.
It’s a party, and the lights are colored and the music is loud and there’s Rebecca passed out on the floor. The boy next to her on the sofa adjusts his gold-rimmed spectacles and clears his throat.
“Becky,” he slurs drunkenly, “that is no way for a lady to behave.” Rebecca is in no condition to respond. The boy taps her on the head.
The Sisters of Mercy. “This Corrosion,” the long version. “Killer,” says the boy, and leaves Rebecca to her own devices. Alcohol leaves him unable to dance properly, but no one else can either.
“I’m so afraid of not having it,” she tells the ceiling.
“Having what?”
“That intangible ‘it’-ness that every so-called personality in America has.”
“I see.” A pause. “How does that make you feel?”
Rebecca frowns, considering. “Not special,” she sighs. “Very much not deserving of the breaks I get. I should be a librarian or something.”
“Don’t you think you got this far because you have something special?”
“You’re supposed to be pretty! I don’t understand. I’m not pretty.”
“Why don’t you think you’re pretty, Rebecca?”
“They tell me I fit the image, but nobody has ever told me I was pretty.”
“Let’s continue this next week.”
The boy is standing in a well-lit kitchen chopping celery into thin slices. “Beck,” he calls into the next room, “how much did you say?”
“A cup and a half,” she replies, strolling into the room. She smiles as she sniffs the air. “Something smells good. Too bad I can’t have any.”
“Aw, live a little.”
She shakes her head, her ponytail bouncing. “Can’t. Job in two days. Mom and Dad will like it.” She takes a sip from a glass of water left on the counter.
“So do they know?”
“Know what?”
“Don’t play innocent. I assume they know that you and I—”
“They love you. I assured them we’re still friends.”
The boy stops chopping and looks at Rebecca. “Are we?”
“Are we what?”
“Still friends?”
Rebecca puts down her water and gives the boy a bear hug. He tries clumsily to turn it into a grope, but she pulls away. “Tate, if you keep pulling crap like that, I might not want to still be friends.”
She leaves him to his chopping, and he pushes his glasses up higher on his nose.
Heath, on the brown leather couch in his office; Rebecca in the wing chair opposite, ashing a clove into a cigar tray on the coffee table. He coos preciously at her and hugs his crossed knees. “Do you even know how in demand you’re becoming?”
“Tell me.”
“You’re fabulous.”
She doesn’t look thrilled.
“I want to work more with Evan Blandovend,” she says quietly to her lap.
“What?” Heath leans forward.
She repeats herself. This time her voice is too loud. She flinches. Heath’s laugh is bird-like.
“Darling, you were so lucky that he deigned to do that perfume shoot. I dunno if he’s up for anything that you’d be appropriate for.” Reclining back, putting his feet up on the couch. “Besides, he’s off doing a music video in Viewpond. Some garage band.”
Downtown Viewpond. Not a pond in sight. Nondescript, flat. Twilight highlights the grit, though there’s not much vandalism. A paper bag blowing across the street here, a crumpled newspaper against a mesh fence there. Coffeehouses, record stores, a cinema, a theatre. Like ticking off requisites for a hip section of Nameless Town, USA. Rebe
cca outside the theatre, gazing at play posters. Touring companies cutting a swath across the dullest spot of the country armed with Broadway revivals. She consults a fragment of yellow notebook paper in her hand, crosses to the next block, and finds the building she seeks.
It’s a club that looks bigger from the outside than it does on the inside. Mardi Gras, the name in elfin green neon above the door. Pre-recorded punk rock greets Rebecca as she slips inside.
Just the band onstage lip-synching and the crew in the audience filming, and Evan Blandovend in the middle of all of it, looking like he’s melting into the darkness but for the golden shag of hair. Messy tonight, not slicked back. Unfiltered something-or-other pressing unlit between his stern lips. Attention focusing pensively upon the band. Rebecca’s eyes briefly take in three androgynous twentysomethings with various physical homages to DIY piercings and tattoos, Manic Panic hair dye, and black leather. Their electric instruments aren’t even turned on. When this is all over, their artsy-fartsy black and white video stylishly supervised by Evan probably won’t be worthy of them, but it’ll splatter them onto 120 Minutes and the cover of Spin. The “Best of the ‘90s” titleholder is still up for grabs, and these boys are just the sort of bland, dull thing people enjoy.
Is that why I get work, too? she wonders.
Rebecca runs her hand through slightly-oily hair, steps into a shadow, and eventually departs. She can stalk less conspicuously by waiting outside for him to leave.
“Hey, right, um, yes, seeing you again, okaaaay...” He trails off, the words floaty and whiskey-slurred. Rebecca is suggestively posed against a brick wall. Crisp little hints of autumn descend upon them, starlight, moonlight, streetlight shimmery on white faces. Evan waves limply to the crew as they stream out of the club. “Whatsit? Oh, my, yes, Roberta Romulan.” He giggles, clearly chemically altered.
“Rebecca O’Rhian.”
“Right, yes, very good. Irish, eh?”