Warped

by Rick Ochre

  #

  They were well-fed. It wasn’t hard. Beers lined up on the bar, whatever they wanted to eat. Sometimes they danced; if one was asked, they all got on the dance floor. They made out with different guys every night, even Lisa, who came home giggling one evening and confided that the boy had pinched her nipples hard and tried to roll them around like a dial on a radio. Lisa and Heather and Trish compared how far the guys went—how far they tried to go—never letting them past their waistbands. Destinee said little, stretched out on the bed with her hair in a ponytail, only this—“You only get one first time. Don’t waste it.”

  They always came home together. Destinee would tap them on the shoulder, find them out in the parking lot leaning on some boy’s car, tucked into the yeasty dark of a booth, and they’d trip home, leaning on each other and laughing.

  Destinee made sure they always took their makeup off before getting into bed.

  #

  Their last day they woke to drizzle, but as they ate their cereal a patch of sun lanced through the window, splashed on the carpet and caught them all by surprise.

  They were down to the beach in twenty minutes, with their bikinis and suntan lotion and sunglasses and extra towels lifted from the housekeeping cart. The beach was mobbed—girls on islands of towels, jousting knots of boys careening past, hollering and throwing footballs waist-deep in the surf.

  They strolled and found a volleyball game, watched for a while. Six boys and a Styrofoam cooler full of beer. Destinee joined the game, and she was surprisingly good: she’d go down on a knee to bump the ball, jump high to spike it. Her team won. The guys picked her up and carried her down the beach, their hands supporting her hips, her shoulders, and she threw back her head and trailed her fingertips through the salty air and laughed.

  The night before, she’d been in a different mood. She stole a pack of cigarettes off the bar and she and Trish sat outside and smoked while Lisa and Heather played drinking games with boys who said they were from Harvard.

  Destinee told Trish three amazing things. First, she’d be twenty-five in June. Second, her four front teeth weren’t real. A man who’d lived with her mother had hit her in the mouth when she was fifteen, and she’d had to live with the cracked shards for months, filing down the sharpest edges with an emery board so she didn’t cut herself, until the aunt who actually was an aunt paid a visit and dragged her off to a dentist. Third, she had a 3.8 GPA.

  She also told Trish a few other things that weren’t so surprising. She’d had two abortions and two men had asked her to marry them. She didn’t plan to get married, ever. She said this last with steel in her voice.

  “I can’t believe everything that’s happened to you,” Trish said, meaning it.

  Destinee shrugged. “Life gives you shit sometimes, you know, problems. You just have to learn to fix them. That’s what I did, I learned to fix things.”

  “Why did you come on this trip?” Trish blurted, beer and smoke and unaccustomed intimacy making her blunt.

  Destinee blew out a long thin stream of smoke. “I just kind of wanted to feel like a real college student, I guess.”

  “But do you—I mean, did you even really like us?”

  Destinee unrolled a smile that softened her flashy features and made her look almost sweet. “Not much. But I do now.”

  #

  Their last night: a little extra eyeliner, aloe for their sunburns, their best outfits pressed, perfume behind their ears and between their breasts.

  Emboldened, the boys in the same mood. In the morning, everyone would be on the road with their hangovers and sodden bathing suits in plastic bags, back to the East and the Midwest where trees stood black and leafless, where curbs held sooty piles of snow and ice.

  No beer tonight—it was mai tais and daiquiris. After dinner, Destinee dragged them to the parking lot; a grinning boy held open the door to his car. Destinee gave directions; she sat up front while everyone else jammed in the back, laughing, knees and hands a jumble.

  They got out a long way up the strip. Here, the hotels were new and sleek and tall, the parking lots weeded and the landscaping trimmed and lush. They parked in front of a hotel that had a revolving night club on top. The boy started to get out of the car, but Destinee kissed him and Trish could see her slip her tongue in his mouth, press her hand to his chest. Then she was out of the car and sprinting and they followed her, caught up in her energy, her determination, and they didn’t see that boy again.

  Up in the lounge on top of the hotel, Trish was mildly disappointed: it was softly lit and decorated with club chairs and bamboo coffee tables, but through the windows the ocean looked like nothing. She couldn’t even tell the room moved.

  She stared out at the darkness, swaying to the music, enjoying her buzz. Then Destinee came up behind her and whispered, “I brought you a little surprise.” Behind her trailed two guys in nice pants and Hawaiian shirts. They came smiling, came with two drinks each in their hands, with money showing in the way they said hello.

  “This is Brett and James,” she said. “They’re here on business. They got us a table. Heather says the spinning’s making her sick. She’s going home with Lisa.”

  “Oh!” Trish looked around; hadn’t they all been here moments ago? “Is that all right? Are they mad?”

  Destinee gave her a sunny smile and leaned in for a kiss on the cheek. “No, they’re fine. Go, I’ll be right back, I’ll just walk them to the elevator. Order us something nice.”

  Trish felt a little wobbly as she followed the men to the table. “Don’t you have to eat dinner to sit here?” she asked.

  The taller one, James, laughed. “Got that covered, darlin’. We’ve eaten in this dive at least four times this week. Think they’ll put up with us a little longer.”

  Destinee returned and ordered Trish a basket of fried shrimp—“to keep your strength up”—and they listened to Brett explain about the outboard engine business and the fishing trip they’d taken their clients on and how Savannah was the new boom town. Trish spotted a tan line where Brett’s wedding ring had been and for a second tried to figure out how to signal that fact to Destinee. But then James’s hand was on her knee and he did something with his fingers along her skin that made the rest of the week’s groping seem like practice, and she forgot.

  #

  But in Brett’s room, which had bottles lined up on the desk and a boom box playing Foreigner, she started to feel a little sick. Brett had draped towels over the two bed lamps so the room was lit in a soft, dim glow. He and Destinee played cards on the bed.

  James had the adjoining room, and the door between the two was wide open. He tugged at the top of her skirt, “Want to dance?” and Trish thought the suggestion was sweet, but what she really needed was air. She let him dance her through the door into his room, and then she took his hand and pulled him out on the balcony and took some deep breaths, the whole while thinking this is a man who held her from behind, erection pressed up hard against her ass, chin tucked beneath her ear, stubble lighting little fires in her tender flesh. This is a man.

  It helped, but the queasiness didn’t go completely away.

  “You were the prettiest girl in the place,” James whispered, and his breath was whiskey and smoke and it blended with his cologne and even through the nausea Trish thought why not? Why not tonight? She wasn’t sure she was even technically a virgin anymore; at the Sig Ep valentine formal Ron Covers had managed to get three fingers in her and judging by the pain, something had to have happened down there. Well, she could get it done tonight, older guys always had condoms.

  “I just…” a wave came and she swallowed hard, concentrated on keeping everything down. The nausea was more an annoyance than a deterrent; if she could just get past the worst of it—and maybe not drink any more—she’d be fine.

  “We’ll go slow,” James said, lifting her skirt and trailing his fingers along the outside of her thighs, pressing against her through the thin nylon of her panties. “We
don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I just want to touch you.”

  Trish wanted to reassure him, but she couldn’t speak for a moment, and what she really needed him to do was to stop rocking into her for a few minutes so she could catch her breath, if he’d just be still she’d be fine, but he was keeping up a rhythm and on each thrust it pressed her gut against the top of the railing, wasn’t that kind of low didn’t they have laws about these things and oh God she really, really had to hurl—

  She let out a wail and made a desperate effort to suck down air but what came out was an enormous belch and then a small spray of bilious spittle and she tried to swallow that too, moaning and suddenly James jerked hard against her and she gripped the rail to hold herself up and turned and James was lurching away from her and then he jerked again and sank slowly to the floor, and Destinee was standing there behind him holding a bent and twisted thing in her hand and reaching for her.

  “Did he?” Destinee shrieked. “Did he?” and suddenly Trish didn’t have to throw up anymore and Destinee’s hand was on her arm pinching hard and Trish looked from her friend to the man motionless at their feet.

  “No…no!” Trish didn’t think, just yanked her skirt all the way up—like here, look, still got my panties on—and Destinee looked at her, and looked down at James, took her silver shoe and toed him over, saw his pants were up, nothing unbuttoned, nothing unzipped, and Trish watched the look in Destinee’s eyes go understanding and hard and glinty but not one nickel’s worth of sorry.

  “What—what did you hit him with?” Trish whispered. “Where’s Brett?”

  “Brett went to get ice,” Destinee said, bending down and lifting up James’s wrist, which was frighteningly limp. “I came to check on you. I thought—you were crying—”

  “No, Destinee, I was fine, I was just trying not to throw up—”

  Destinee held her fingers to James’s wrist as her face went increasingly tight. “How could I know,” she muttered, “the way he was humping you for God’s sakes how was I supposed to know? You sounded like you were trying to get away from him, shit he’s twice your size….shit!”

  Destinee threw James’s wrist back at him; it hit his chest and flopped there unmoving.

  “Shit!” She said again. She looked down at the thing in her hand: an arrangement of metal parts. The word carburetor came to Trish’s mind—piston. Destinee held it up, “Brett was showing me his fucking work shit.”

  She shoved the thing at Trish, and Trish took it and God it was heavy and cold and blunt and she set it quickly down on the little patio table she didn’t want to touch the thing—

  “Help me,” Destinee said tersely. She bent down, slid her hands under James’s shoulders and yanked him up; she was a little thing but she was tough, Trish knew she was tough and suddenly she understood, and then she was on her knees, looping her hands under James’s legs.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he,” she said, voice Jell-O, not even her voice.

  “Yes. He’s dead and Brett’s going to be looking for me and we have to make this right.”

  “But we can’t—”

  But Trish was already tugging, the two of them were pulling and tugging and oh my God how could he be so heavy? They pushed him against the railing and lift-rolled him up the side and finally got him to the top, his slack body resting on the rail, arms drooping to either side, metal pushing into his neck. Trish wanted to pull him back, put him back, put him on the bed, call the paramedics, the cops, but oh my God Destinee knew what to do, Destinee was handling it—

  Trish remembered the way Destinee had pulled her hair gently to the side one night and told her she looked like Madonna and Trish couldn’t let her down, she couldn’t let Destinee down. She gave just the smallest shove and the body rolled, it slipped away from them and over the rail and Trish squeezed her eyes shut hard. It was an unbelievably long time before they heard the sound, the thudding squashing sound down below, and then she did open her eyes but she looked at Destinee, only at Destinee.

  “That’s right, baby girl,” Destinee whispered and pulled her close—and even though Trish was three inches taller she let Destinee hold her as she shook and trembled.

  “Now do just what I tell you,” Destinee said, drawing gently away. “We’re not quite done here. Don’t worry, you hear? Sugar don’t worry, I can fix this. I know how to make it all right.”

  And Trish did as she was told and she stayed strong for Destinee, she did what she was told.

  Destinee knew what to do. Destinee would show her how to make it all right.

  ##

  SOMEONE HAS TO PAY

  “I hate you,” Dalton Clevenger said with all the menace he could muster, “and I hate your fucking little face.”

  He was kneeling against the blue love seat, the one that Marcy had special-ordered the Italian fabric for, that took six months to arrive at the shockingly overpriced upholstery studio in Westport, where Marcy’s decorator had it made into a chair which, in the end, didn’t seem much different from anything he’d seen on the floor at Macy’s.

  Six months of Marcy bitching about the empty spot in her almost-redecorated living room. Dinner parties had been delayed pending the chair’s arrival—and now the thing was here, and Bentley had turned it into a dog bed in a matter of days.

  “If you keep barking at night I’m going to yank your tiny little balls off with a pair of pliers,” Dalton continued, but the dog merely breathed its execrable breath in Dalton’s face, the picture of calm. Little tufts of its fur had come loose and lodged all over the chair’s cushion—the nubby fabric seemed designed to attract it, in fact. There was something wrong with this breed of dog: its lips didn’t quite cover its teeth, so it looked eternally pugnacious and buck-toothed at the same time. Hideous, but Marcy and her friends all had one.

  Or a pair.

  Marcy wanted another. Bentley was orangeish; wouldn’t it be sweet to have a little white one, a female?—she wondered as they were having after-dinner drinks with the Swifts and Mracks last night. No, it wouldn’t be sweet, Dalton thought but didn’t say; it would be a travesty. Another creature in the house who would make demands of him and chip away at the paltry reserves of serenity he still had left, giving him nothing in return.

  They’d finally got the kids through college, and the memory of those last few years of living together was fresh and objectionable enough that his son and daughter were keeping their distance. They had jobs in cities hundreds of miles away—Laurel in D.C., Cooper in Chicago—and while Dalton figured that soon enough there would be weddings and, God help him, grandchildren, he desperately wanted to be left alone for just a little while.

  “If I find your shit in the family room again I’m going to pry your jaws open and stuff it down your throat,” Dalton said, but the dog appeared to be bored with the exercise; he put his chin on his paws and stared at Dalton dispassionately.

  Dalton creaked to his feet, taking it in stages. At fifty-three, the best he could do was pretend his aches and pains were the result of sports injuries, of long-lost victories on collegiate fields, with pretty girls in wooly scarves calling his name and waving mittened hands as he took one for the team.

  #

  Sunday drained itself away both too quickly and too slowly and then it was Monday again. Face-the-music day.

  There hadn’t been any point in telling Marcy, but Dalton’s fate lay somewhere on the continuum between cluster-fuck and complete ruin: they just might choose him to sacrifice this time.

  With fourteen years and several such crises behind him at Bain Goldwyn, Dalton sensed that his number was due to come up. It was always a guy like him—successful, but not quite successful enough.

  He suspected that if he had the benefit of a perfect memory he could pinpoint the exact moment when his fate turned. When his path, which he’d hoped would lead to a directorship, had instead veered off toward mediocrity. He’d stayed a vice president a little too long, turning in numbers that ranged from adeq
uate to not half bad.

  Bernard Kaminsky, though—why him? Bernard had just as many dirty fingers in the current pie as Dalton, but word was he was being tagged to take over Institutional Equities. The Credit Strategies department would be nothing but a bad memory for Bernard six months from now, and in what Dalton was quickly coming to believe was a permanent inversion of justice at Bain Goldwyn, six months should be exactly when Institutional Equities would start to level off from its current free-fall, and Bernard would end up being hailed as a visionary.

  Dalton got to work early. In a rare deviation from routine, he drove all the way to the city. Got to the Metro-North stop, observed that there was still plenty of parking available, and then for some reason drove right past. Something about driving along I-95 in the dark, the sky cracking into bloody fissures of dawn. Something about the silence of the road, somehow more profound when he and his fellow drivers sped along in concert, with none of the afternoon rush-hour dodge-and-feint.

  He parked in the twenty-eight-dollar lot a block from his office. Two blocks farther there was another lot, charged twenty-two. Dalton muttered fuck it under his breath. Ate some Tums and a couple of hard Bavarian pretzels from the bag he kept in his desk. Fat-free. Drank two cups of coffee, then a Diet Pepsi.

  Went through email. Around eight, here came one from Marcy. She liked to sit at the computer with her coffee every morning. She and her friends had discovered blogging; they couldn’t stop talking about it. Like they’d invented the fucking things. One of them had a tennis blog. Another did Westport historic landmarks and wrote endlessly about her Abyssinian cats. And so on. Dalton knew this because they all linked to each other; Marcy’s was a potpourri of inspirational passages she’d found in her Oprah books and reporting on the renovation and redecoration of the house.