Twisted City

by Jason Starr

  But, I had to admit, she looked especially hot tonight in skintight jeans, a pink halter top, and matching pink sandals. I had never seen the sandals before and I realized why my Visa card had a $124 charge on it from a purchase made this afternoon at Wheels of London, a shoe store on Eighth Street.

  She came over and kissed me on the lips, slipping her studded tongue into my mouth for a second or two. She tasted like a bong hit.

  Then she pulled back and said, “How was your day, cutie?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “The business writer was out lettin’ his hair down tonight,” Ray said.

  Rebecca looked at me with an intrigued smile. “Are you drunk?”

  “No, I just had a couple beers with the CEO I was interviewing.”

  “Oh, how did that go?”

  “It went okay,” I said. “I mean I think I got all the information I need for my article.”

  “Good, I’m so happy for you,” she said.

  “So what’s this about a party tonight?” I asked.

  “Oh, it was kind of a last-minute thing. Rachel told me about it this afternoon. Her manager’s friend is this, like, famous clothing designer or something? Anyway, he’s having this big party at this new club in Soho tonight—it should be slammin’. Wanna come?”

  I knew she didn’t really want me to go—if she did I wouldn’t have had to basically invite myself—but I wouldn’t’ve gone if she begged me. When Rebecca and I first met and I was excited about dating her, I used to go out clubbing and barhopping with her and her friends all the time. It was fun the first couple of times—dressing up like an MTV groupie in FUBU jerseys, Snoop Dogg jeans, and other clothes Rebecca bought for me. But after a while I started feeling ridiculous— the old guy in his mid-thirties out with a bunch of kids in their early twenties—and Rebecca started going out without me.

  “I’d love to,” I said, “but I have a deadline for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Blow it off,” Rebecca said, acting disappointed.

  “Sorry, can’t,” I said.

  “Well, I’m gonna miss you.” She kissed me again, making out with me for a few seconds. When she broke away she said to Ray, “Ready to go, cuz?”

  “After you, baby,” Ray said, smiling widely as he put his arm around her waist.

  As Rebecca was leaving the kitchen, I said, “By the way, your credit cards won’t work tonight.”

  Rebecca stopped and turned around, suddenly panicked. “Why not?”

  “I got pickpocketed.”

  “You did?” she said, sounding more concerned about her credit cards than the fact that I had been robbed.

  “Yeah, it must’ve happened in an elevator or something,” I said. “I thought I felt something, but when I realized what had happened it was too late—my wallet was gone.”

  “That sucks,” Rebecca said, still probably thinking about her credit cards. “Did you call the police?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Just to report it?”

  “They won’t do anything.”

  “You sure?”

  “He’s right,” Ray said. “The police won’t do shit about a wallet.”

  “So why won’t my credit cards work?” she asked.

  “Well, I had to close the accounts, didn’t I?” I said.

  “I guess that was smart,” she said. “You think you can, like, lend me some money tonight?”

  Lend, I thought. That was a good one.

  “The only money I have is in the dresser in the bedroom,” I said. “I can’t get any more until I open my bank accounts tomorrow.”

  Rebecca pouted. I wanted to say, “Too bad,” but I guess if I had the ability to turn her down I wouldn’t have let her have access to my money and credit cards in the first place.

  “How much do you need?” I asked weakly.

  “How much do you have?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe twenty bucks.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Sorry.”

  It felt good to put my foot down with Rebecca for once, but of course in this case it helped that I had no choice.

  “Hey, I know,” Rebecca said, brightening. “You keep your Discover card in the top drawer of your dresser? So that card must still work, right?”

  I’d forgotten about the Discover card. I rarely used it, but Rebecca had one in her name too.

  “Yeah, it works,” I said.

  “Slammin’!” Rebecca said. She started out of the kitchen with Ray, then turned back to me and said, “Hey, you sure you don’t want to come out with us?”

  “Next time,” I said.

  “I shouldn’t be home too late,” Rebecca said. “Two or three. I have my cell if you need me.”

  “You mean my cell,” I said.

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “Have a great time,” I said, smiling.

  When Rebecca and Ray were gone I scavenged the fridge, eating some leftover burrito from the other night and a yogurt, and then I went to the alcove in the living room and booted up my computer. The Windows wallpaper came on—a picture of my sister Barbara and me, taken at Syracuse. She was a senior and I was a sophomore and we were in front of my dorm—me in jeans and an Orangemen basketball jersey and her in a Lands’ End sweater, a knapsack over one shoulder. She looked good in the picture, but it didn’t really do her justice. She had pale skin, but the picture made it ruddier, especially around her cheeks, and she must’ve been having a bad hair day, because her hair looked much frizzier than it really was. I tried to remember who had taken the picture—maybe Aunt Helen or a friend of Barbara’s—then I became distracted by the scent of Glow by J. Lo that Rebecca had left in her wake.

  I opened a file in Word and worked on my article for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate, thinking about the last time I saw Barbara, at Sloan-Kettering.

  “You can’t even look at me anymore,” she said. “I disgust you.” She looked so awful—half-bald from the chemo, her skin ghostly gray. It was hard to believe the tumor in her brain had been discovered only three weeks earlier.

  “What’re you talking about?” I said. “That’s crazy.”

  “See? You can’t even look at me right now.”

  I turned toward her, realizing she was crying.

  “Come on, stop it,” I said, getting up to find her a tissue.

  “Get the hell out of here!” she screamed. “Just go!”

  “Calm down. I didn’t mean—”

  “I hate you, you son of a bitch! Just get the fuck out of here!”

  I started working again, writing a line I’d insert somewhere in the story about how Byron Technologies would likely have to seek equity financing later in the year, but I couldn’t focus, remembering the awful, hollow sounds the shovelfuls of dirt made against Barbara’s coffin. I had been in shock during the entire funeral, unable to cry or show any emotion, and for weeks afterward I remained in a zombielike state, unwilling to accept the fact that she was dead. I stopped showing up for my job as a technology reporter at the Wall Street Journal, without giving any explanation. Eventually the paper’s personnel department informed me that I had been terminated, but I didn’t care. I spent most of my time in bed, lying on the couch, or wandering the streets, confronted by memories of Barbara wherever I went. Just standing on a street corner would remind me of a time we had been on that corner, and I’d remember snippets of conversations we’d had, things we’d laughed about, and the memories would be so vivid that the idea that she was dead, that I couldn’t call her up on my cell phone or drop by her place to hang out, would seem incomprehensible.

  I remembered one Saturday afternoon, taking one of my usual long, aimless walks through Central Park. The park had as many memories as the streets, but it was a beautiful, early spring day and I needed to get on with my life. I walked to the East Side, then back through the winding paths of the Ramble, exiting onto the wooden footbridge. I’d taken a picture of Barbara on the bridge on
ce. Holding the camera vertically, I’d knelt, shooting up at Barbara, who was posing like a fashion model with a hand on one hip and her windblown hair pushed over to one side, her image perfectly framed by the midtown skyscrapers in the distance. I continued along the path adjacent to the West Drive, and stopped for a moment past the boat landing, where people were lounging on the grass, listening to a scruffy guy playing old folk songs on an acoustic guitar. During “Moon Shadow,” I remembered how Barbara had a few old, scratched-up Cat Stevens albums that I’d donated to a thrift shop with most of her other things. The memories were getting too painful, and I was about to leave when I spotted a girl on a blanket on the lawn.

  The girl was wearing denim cutoffs and a red bikini top, her head tilted to the left slightly, toward the sun. She looked young, in her early twenties, and the way she was lounging, looking so relaxed and content, reminded me of all the afternoons Barbara and I had spent in the park.

  I was going to walk away when the woman looked at me and smiled widely and waved. I thought it was cute—the way she seemed so spontaneous and comfortable with herself, like a child almost. I smiled, realizing it was probably the first time I’d smiled in days, or even weeks. I also realized that I needed someone else in my life, that I couldn’t take being alone anymore.

  Without giving it any more thought, I approached the girl, figuring I’d say, Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? I knew it was a lame opening, but it had worked for me several times before, and besides, I wasn’t the type of guy who could think of great, spontaneous pickup lines.

  But, as it turned out, I didn’t have to use any line, because the girl spoke to me first.

  “Hi, I’m Rebecca.”

  She smiled again, and I noticed the silver stud glistening on her tongue. I’d never understood why people pierced their tongues, or any other parts of their bodies other than their ear-lobes, but I had to admit there was something sexy about it. She also had wide, eager eyes and a friendly smile. I stared at her for a few seconds before I said, “Oh, I’m David,” and we started talking. The conversation wasn’t exactly riveting—we discussed how great the weather had been so far this spring, and how pretty the lake was—but I could tell she liked me. Then the scruffy guy finished “Moon Shadow” and started “Stairway to Heaven.”

  “Nobody can play it like Jimmy Page,” I said.

  “Who?” she asked.

  Okay, so there was a generation gap, but there was something intriguing about her, and at least I wasn’t thinking about Barbara.

  After a few minutes, she invited me to join her on her blanket. I happily accepted, and I tried my best to keep the conversation going. Every guy has a repertoire of a few stories that he uses in an attempt to woo women, and I was no exception. I told her about the trip Barbara and I had taken to Europe one summer during college, the time a frying pan started an oil fire in my kitchen and I barely got out of my apartment alive, about the boating accident that had killed my parents when I was five, and then I went on my usual rant about how crowded Central Park was getting and how Riverside Park was much hipper. After I was through with my monologue, my mouth dry from talking so much, she told me all about the trauma of her parents’ divorce and how she’d moved to California the summer after high school graduation. After living in L.A. for several years, trying to make it as a modern dancer, she moved to New York, and she was currently living on a friend’s couch in Brooklyn. Although, as I spoke, she said “wow” and “awesome” at appropriate times, I knew she was barely paying attention. I wasn’t offended, though, because I wasn’t really listening to her either. I guess we were at that awkward, beginning stage of a relationship when you’re too concerned with trying to impress the other person to really care about anything else.

  I walked her out of the park, to the subway on Seventy-ninth, and asked her for her phone number. She wrote her number in eyeliner on my forearm, which I thought was cute and sexy. The next night we went out to dinner at the Cajun in Chelsea. Afterward, we went out to a club called Aria, which she obviously frequented, because all of the bouncers and bartenders called her “Becky.” We danced for a couple of hours, then went back to my place and had sex. She liked to take control in bed, getting on top and pinning me down hard, and I was also really turned on by the big dragonfly tattoo just above her ass.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I didn’t obsess about Barbara as much, and I was able to live a normal, functional life again. I couldn’t get my job back at the Journal, so I started applying for other jobs, and tried to do some freelance work on the side. Rebecca and I went out sometimes, but most nights she just came over to my place, usually late in the evening or early in the morning, to have sex. Most of my past girlfriends had been conservative in bed, so it was refreshing to be with Rebecca, who loved to bite me and talk dirty. Once in a while, she tied me up to the bedposts and spanked me.

  After we’d been seeing each other for about a month, the friend whose couch Rebecca had been crashing on lost her lease, leaving Rebecca with no place to live. Figuring that she and I were practically living together anyway, I suggested she move her things over to my place until she found another apartment. I made it clear to her that I couldn’t see us getting seriously involved, and she agreed that we were “just having fun.” As long as we both had the same minimal expectations, I figured I had nothing to worry about.

  When we’d met, Rebecca was working part-time at a coffee bar in Soho. She got fired from her job after showing up late three mornings in a row—each time, she’d been wasted or had a hangover and slept through the alarm clock—so I started lending her money while she tried to find something else. We kept a tab of how much she owed me, but it was only a few hundred dollars, and I didn’t really care if she paid me back.

  One night, after Rebecca and I had been living together for a few weeks or so, I took her out with me to a party at my friend Keith’s, a guy I knew from Syracuse. Keith and my other friends acted weird all night, and I figured they were just jealous because Rebecca was much better-looking than their dates. About a week later, after work one night, I went to Ruby Foo’s on Broadway to meet Keith and Mike, another friend, for dinner. When I approached the table I was surprised to see Keith and Mike seated with several of my friends, some with their wives and girlfriends. It was June and my birthday was in October, so I knew this wasn’t a surprise party.

  I joined them at the table and said, smiling, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Everyone was friendly, but no one would explain why they were all there.

  “Come on, what’s this all about?” I asked.

  People looked at each other, then turned to Keith for leadership. Keith stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “We’re worried about you, man.”

  “Worried about what?” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “We don’t think Rebecca’s right for you,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I smiled. Everybody else remained very serious.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said. “Why isn’t she right for me?”

  “We think she’s dangerous,” Keith said.

  I laughed. Rebecca was ditzy, shallow, a little on the wild side, but dangerous?

  “Dangerous?” I said.

  I looked at my friend Joe, who’d brought his wife, Sharon. Then I turned toward Phil, with his girlfriend, Jane, and looked over at Tom, and Stu, and Mark, and Rob, but no one would crack a smile.

  “So what is this,” I said, “some kind of intervention?”

  “We’re doing it for your own good, my brother,” Phil said.

  Since Phil had gotten a job in the marketing department at Jive Records he had started calling everybody “my brother.”

  “Look, I’m sorry if you guys didn’t hit it off with Rebecca,” I said, “but I really don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  “She’s psycho,” Joe said.

  “Psycho?” I said. “How is she psycho?”

  “Didn’
t you hear what she said to me the other night?” Sharon said.

  I remembered how at the party Rebecca had had a few too many and had argued with Sharon, calling her “a dumb, ugly bitch.”

  “So her drinking gets a little out of hand sometimes,” I said.

  “She said she wanted to slit my throat,” Sharon said.

  “She didn’t mean it,” I said. “Come on, you guys have never gotten drunk?”

  I was looking in particular at Tom, infamous for drinking sixteen bottles of Rolling Rock one night freshman year.

  “I saw her doing coke in the bathroom,” Keith said.

  “So what’s a little coke?” I said. “Come on, Keith, man. I remember in college, you used to make runs into the city all the time for coke and ’shrooms.”

  “That was the eighties,” Keith said, as if that explained everything.

  “We’re doing this for your own good,” Mike said. “We think the girl’s got some serious problems and you’re gonna get hurt.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “You’re hiding from yourself emotionally,” Jane said.

  Phil and Jane had been going out for about six months, and I barely knew her. She was going for her Ph.D. in psychology at the New School, so of course she thought she had all the answers.

  “Oh, am I?” I said.

  “You haven’t fully dealt with your emotions about your sister’s death,” she continued. “You’re only in this relationship with Rebecca because it’s a convenient place to hide. You’re very vulnerable right now, and you’re probably not even aware of what you’re doing.”

  “You don’t even know me,” I said. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “Chill, my brother,” Phil said.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said to everyone, “but I think you’re all a bunch of assholes.”

  I stormed out of the restaurant. The next day, Keith left a message for me at work, apologizing for organizing the intervention, but reminding me that it was for my own good. I didn’t bother returning the call.

  Over the next couple of months, I fell out of touch with most of my friends, but I stayed with Rebecca. Freelancing wasn’t working out, and supporting Rebecca was seriously depleting my bank account, so when I was offered a job at Manhattan Business for roughly half of what I’d been making at the Journal, I had no choice but to take it. Rebecca went about her routine—shopping during the day and going out with her friends at night—and I went about mine, working during the day and into the early evening, and hanging out in my apartment the rest of the time, or occasionally going to a movie alone. Once in a while, Rebecca and I went out to dinner together or hung out in the living room, watching TV, but otherwise the only times we saw each other were when we were having sex. Our romps became even wilder and more adventurous. Sometimes she left me tied up to the bedposts for hours while she went out shopping, and I often wound up with cuts and bruises.