“I…I didn’t set Dreambee’s on fire,” he said as he sat down atop her pink comforter on the bed beside her.
“Sage said Dreambee’s burnt down!” she whispered in a pink hush, so her parents wouldn’t hear if they happened to walk past her bedroom or happened to turn down the volume on the television. The sun set heavy upon her mind, the colors swirling with the distant television howls coming from the living room.
“Yeah…yeah, I heard about…about that. What a coincidence.” He was looking at her calmly.
“I can’t believe that you’re actually denying it. It’s so obvious. You must think I’m so stupid or something,” she started to cry.
To her dismay, Rave did not respond to her crying like she had anticipated. He seemed unaffected and aloof as if he was more enamored with the ravenous wolf sounds of tearing flesh and bone wafting into the room. She was accustomed to getting what she wanted in life through crying or making people feel sorry for her. Her father, as detached as he appeared, had conditioned her that way. Before his midlife crisis, whenever she cried, he most often appeased her. Though, at the moment, she didn’t actually know what she wanted.
“I just set…set off a…a smoke…smoke bomb in the bathroom. I thought it was strange when…when I saw on the news that it had burnt down. It must have…it must have been from a kitchen fire from the…the cooks. A mistake I suppose.”
“You must think I’m stupid,” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Barbey.”
She loved the way he said her name. Butterflies kicked in her stomach for an instant and then she reminded herself that she had to forget about him.
Rave was looking at her intensely, “I…I think I’m falling…falling in love with you, Barbey.” He leaned toward her and ran his hand down her face without actually touching her. She could feel vibrations of energy releasing from his hand as he continued down her neck pausing at her breast, sliding down to her stomach. He laid back against a pillow on his side and looked at her with glazed eyes.
Intense shocks of passion ran through her body, but then she remembered how she had told her previous boyfriend that she loved him early in their relationship when in fact she didn’t. She had always felt like a superficial liar pretending to love him. She did love Rave though. It seemed foolish to her that she could love him when she had only known him for a short time, so she responded, “It seems so quick.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t say I…I love you. I said I think I’m falling.”
“Oh.” She felt disappointed somehow—as if she had expected him to already completely love her, not just be falling in love. She realized that her emotions were all shook up and a frizz. She felt she shouldn’t have been measuring the intensity of Rave’s love while she was accusing him of burning down a restaurant. Then it occurred to her that maybe he really didn’t burn down Dreambee’s and that he could be telling the truth. I mean, like, what kind of freak would burn down a restaurant full of people? It must have been a coincidence. It must have been…
Rave was looking down as he traced the flower embroidered patterns on her bedspread with his finger. At that moment he seemed childlike and helpless to her. She felt like she would take care of him always and love him forever the way a mother loves her child, but of course her feelings were romantic as well. She reached to touch his knee, but stopped short and said, “I believe you. I do.”
He smiled gently at her and then for an instant she saw a streak of hate in his eyes. It was strange and she rationalized that she had imagined it. She felt guilty for accusing him.
“My parents are going out of town on vacation Thursday morning for a whole month,” she said changing the subject. “They’re traveling Ireland on horseback with friends.”
“Must…must be nice,” he said. “Hmm… Does…does that mean I can come over Thursday evening to…to see you?”
She had another rehearsal for the Janet Jackson music video Thursday evening, but there was no way she’d miss out on time with Rave, so she responded, “Yes, I would love that.” She would just tell the director that she was sick. They would reschedule. Rave was all she wanted.
The rehearsals were so boring anyway, not at all what she expected. Just being in Rave’s presence lifted her up to euphoric heights. It didn’t seem like dancing in the video held as much potential as she thought it would. The dancers were just background she came to realize and the director was making them wear masks so you couldn’t even tell who they were. She wasn’t the star. One of the crew members offered her role in a soft porn for HBO, but she didn’t want that type of career. Something about being on the set made her lonely.
Rave smiled at her and then got up to leave. It was kind of strange, she thought, because he didn’t say anything else and just left with his skateboard. That was one of the things she liked about him—that he was mysterious and different than other guys. He always surprised her.
17
To Barbey, the next few days at cosmetology school seemed to be possessed with an odd dreamlike quality. Maybe it was because she felt unsettled in her decision that Rave had not started the Dreambee’s fire or maybe because she was somehow turned on by the thrill of the possibility that he actually had started the fire. A part of her internal self, which she was unaware of, was dark and turned on by evil and immorality as has been the case with many young women throughout the ages. Take a look at William Shakespeare’s Juliet. Somehow women are turned on by having a love so passionate and desperate that they could kill themselves over the one they love. A safe guy just isn’t ecstasy. Usually Barbey was oblivious to her desire to delve into the evil realms and considered herself a good girl. This conflict with her conscious identity of being a proverbial good girl and her decision to bask in Rave’s darkness, heightened her senses and elevated her to goddess of her own mind.
Today was the first day in school that Barbey and her classmates would be assigned to real clients. The school offered services to the public at a minimal fee attracting all sorts of diverse clientele who’d rather save a dollar and get a crooked haircut or a botched manicure than pay full price at a real salon. As Barbey frothed the shampoo through an old skinny man’s gray kinky hair, the flamingo designs on the walls seemed to be squawking at her, “Barbey,” one flamingo quacked in its squeaky squawky voice, “You’ve got to diet a little harder if you want to keep Rave’s interest in you. You’re starting to look fat.” The other flamingos laughed in unison and ruffled their feathers in rhythm. Often when Barbey felt insecure about something in her life, she focused on her weight.
“It’s a surreal day,” Barbey said to the old man with his head in the sink.
“Oh yes, when you’re my age, everything is surreal.”
“Huh?” Barbey felt perplexed and hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. She didn’t even know what the word surreal meant. She had never used that vocabulary word or considered the concept.
“You said today was a surreal day.”
“Oh,” Barbey was confused, so she started to scrub his hair harder pouring on more shampoo. “What does surreal mean anyway?”
“So you’re a philosophical beautician aren’t ya—contemplating the depths of reality?” He chuckled, but Barbey didn’t understand what he was talking about.
“Yeah, I guess,” she rolled her eyes, then turned off the faucet and took a fluffy white towel off the shelf from above the sink. “You can lift your head out of the water now,” she said holding out the towel.
“Ah and a clever gal too!” He laughed as she wrapped the towel around his head. “I’ve never kept my head under for long. It may be an escape, but reality is ironically more peaceful.”
Barbey turned and faced the flamingos. “Oh…” she nodded her head as she gazed at their long lean feathers.
The man pushed the towel up higher on his forehead and awkwardly wrapped it tighter. “Don’t mean to disturb ya, Hon, but, where do ya want to sit me?”
Barbey led the old man to a swivel chair at her wooden desk and began combing his curly wet hair, smoothing it between her fingers and angling it as she cut. “Usually I don’t ask strangers things like this, but have you ever been in love?”
“Well, little filly, I think I’m in love right now and I’m looking at the gal.”
Barbey’s eyes widened in surprise and she blushed. “Ooooh that’s gross—you’re like a hundred years old!”
The old man looked a bit startled by her bluntness.
“Just kidding,” Barbey corrected herself.
“Truth be told. After a hundred years of so called life, I’d have better been in love at least once. I’d have to say I loved my peach tree—especially the sensual curves of its branches. That tree seemed to be reaching for me with a hundred arms and legs. Its leaves fluttered in the wind every time I watered it. And those big round plump peaches melted in my mouth trickling down my lips like a hot summer rain. No human woman could ever compare to Suzie Peach Tree—the love of my life.”
“You named your tree?”
“Su—zie,” he drew out the name long and breathy. “Oh, Su—zie Peach Tree. Love names itself.”
“All due respect but, you’ve gotta stop jiggling your head around while you’re talking if you want a normal haircut.”
“Gotcha, little filly.” The old man had a pensive look on his face and then a lone tear trickled down his cheek. He cleared his throat. “After those fire dragons breathed their Santa Ana winds across my property, the land caught fire and Suzie went up in flames. I say people have got to slay their dragons before they have a chance to burn up their hearts. Poor sweet Suzie, my love, my loss.”
Barbey giggled for a second and then seeing that the old man was serious, she looked back at the flamingos on the wall and forced herself to think about dieting. “I don’t see why you’re, like, being hard on yourself. I mean, you can’t control Santa Ana winds. They’re just a part of nature and, like, unpredictable.”
“Well, I could have watched the weather report and I could have also watered down my property to prevent the fire from catching. You cannot love freely. In life you have to do your homework and you have to buy health insurance. Only fools think they’ll pass their classes without doing the work and only fools grow old without preparing. You see, my heart’s broken and I can’t even afford to get a transplant. Stupid me was young and careless and didn’t even buy health insurance before it was too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have health insurance now, but they won’t cover pre-existing conditions. After I lost my Suzie, my heart split internally from the sorrow and I had to let it heal on its own because I couldn’t afford a doctor.”
“Golly. That sounds painful.” Barbey tilted his chin up as she cut his bangs.
“It healed up ok, but with all sorts of gnarled scars. Now nobody will cover all the heart problems I get because of my pre-existing condition. I’d love to just swap my heart for another, but I suppose when you make mistakes, you can never take them back completely. There’s always some negative scars left behind no matter how much time passes. That saying, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ is a crock of poop.”
“Well, I hope your heart heals and you can, like, always plant another tree.”
“I have—believe you me! I told you I’m a hundred years old, so I’ve broken some branches in my day, but everyone only gets one Suzie.
“I’m in love,” said Barbey as she sat her scissors down on the desk.
“I know, little filly. That’s why I told you your story.”
“Huh?” Barbey appeared confused and then suddenly the man was gone and a puff of pink smoke above his seat poofed and then dissipated.
Kimberly walked up from behind Barbey and tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned around, Kimberly stroked her cheek with a blush brush and whispered in her ear, “You wanna do a line of crystal with me and Elvira in the bathroom? It’s good for dieting. You don’t even feel hungry for like eight hours.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, dope. Don’t you know that?”
“Uh, all right, I want to try it.”
It was a sterile, but dingy bathroom with paint peeling off the walls and a strong smell of lilac air freshener and cigarette smoke. Anxiously, Elvira quickly scanned the bathroom, checking the three stalls for people. “Lock the door, so we can set the lines up on the sink counter,” she ordered.
Barbey locked the bathroom door. “I didn’t know public bathrooms have locks.”
Kimberly smirked, “Well this one does—obviously!”
Elvira ignored her because she was anxiously setting little rocks of methamphetamine on a little square piece of mirror that she had placed on the counter. She took a library card out of her wallet and began chopping the rocks into a white powder and then formed them into five lines of powder.
Barbey was nervous and wavering in her mind whether or not she should participate. She had never taken any illegal drugs in her life and had had a reputation at her high school for being a bit prudish, possibly because she hung out with good girls like Sage. Aside from her strong desire to maintain her innocent reputation, Barbey had a compelling curiosity to experiment with the forbidden. Some inner force was driving her to gain knowledge into every facet of life—drugs seemed like a key to an inner knowledge circle of which she was naive. “I have to tell you guys that I actually never tried crystal before.”
Kimberly gave Barbey a mothering look and patted her on the back. “Don’t worry baby. You’re in good hands.”
“Whatever,” Elvira said. “Let’s get to it. Who’s first?”
“Go ahead, Elvira,” Kimberly said.
Elvira took out a little straw from her purse and snorted the first line through her nose careful and slow as if she wanted to enjoy every second of the bitter sensation. She looked up and smiled. “It’s sharp like rolling in the nude on a hill of freezing snow.” Tilting her head back she let out a long cackle like a witch and then she quickly took in the other line.
Kimberly didn’t savor the powder the way Elvira had. She gracefully inhaled the crystal like a professional ice skater performing a double lutz/double toe. “Ok, Barb. Your turn.”
Barbey took the straw from Kimberly and placed it in one of her nostrils. “Does it hurt?”
Elvira seemed impatient. “No, just breathe in hard through the straw and you’ll be stoked.”
Barbey was surprised how the sensation, as the powder went in through her nostril and seemingly bounced off her brain, seemed much like eating too much wasabi on her sushi. It was a sharp and bitter feeling but, it felt masochistically pleasurable.
The rest of the day at school was deliciously fun. The three girls talked incessantly while they fiddled with their clients’ hair and nails. It was as if Barbey had entered the realm of euphoria. Nothing had ever brought her to such heights in her life aside from the intensity that she felt in Rave’s presence. The world was wide open and she was basking in its greatest pleasures—both drugs and Rave. Even her creativity seemed unbounded. The French twist she performed on Mrs. Landers sprouted wings and burst into a magnificent hair bouquet of ringlets. Barbey developed a heightened love for Kimberly and Elvira and she told them she would adore and cherish them forever. They squealed in piglet laughter and for a moment Barbey thought she saw horns sprouting from their heads.
But even greater than Barbey’s heightened joy, was her lack of desire for food. In fact, she felt repulsed by the thought of food. On methamphetamines, she hypothesized that she could maintain a low weight without even trying. Crystal was heaven and Barbey had arrived.
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