Punk and Zen
Page 6
“Nina, I’m sorry,” she began softly, her mouth inches from my ear, but I held up a hand to forestall her. I needed quiet at the moment. I was, after all, still on the job. I watched my fingers tremble, betraying how my body and mind felt as I took a deep, shaky breath, and keyed the microphone.
“Boyz and grrlz, the freaks are out tonight.” My voice came out steadily and with the right tone as the audience clapped and howled in agreement. I waited a few beats for my next statement. “Tonight the moon is on the rise—better watch out, ’cuz no one knows in who a monster hides,” I finished, bringing the mix back up on full.
I shut the mike, then squared my shoulders and set my face. A burning cold hardness that I had felt only once before, once when I’d had to defend myself from the people who were supposed to love me, filled me, and I turned around to look at Trace directly. There must have really been something in my face, because as her eyes met mine, she stepped back.
We watched each other a moment, her eyes confused, evaluating mine hard. She reached out for my face. “Nina, truly, I didn’t mean—”
I’d had it for the night, maybe forever; who knew. But either way, my expression stopped her cold, midword and midmotion. I stared at her hand, suspended between us, until she dropped it.
I crossed my arms over my chest and settled back against the board, languidly stretching one leg over the other. My guts shook, my head hurt, and the spot I was leaning on ached in the way only an incipient bruise can, but I’d be damned, twice damned, if I let her see any of that. I was back in some semblance of control, and, real or no, mask or no, I was going to hold on to it for dear life if I had to.
I took a slow, deep breath and let it out silently. Focus. That’s what I needed, and that’s what I was after. “Trace?” I inquired quietly, arching an eyebrow at her. An eerie, hyper-real calmness filled me, and I was as steady and strong as a rock.
“Yeah?” she answered softly, and her eyes were wide, shocked, as she studied me.
“If you want something, you have to ask,” I stated quietly, and let those words hang in the air. I observed her face and took in the quirk of her lips and sharp jawline, the hint of pain and confusion in her now-darkened eyes as they studied me in return.
Trace took a step closer. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”
“Stop,” I interrupted, my voice low and hard. “Trace?” I asked again softly. “Get out.”
Unused to these tones from me, Trace held her hands slightly away from her body, as if she didn’t know what to do with them, and she stared at me, more in shock, I suspect, than anything else. No one, as far as I knew, ever told Trace what to do—ever.
“Now,” I said, unfolding an arm and pointing toward the door, and it became a contest of wills as we stared each other down. My gaze was steady and unflinching, and my hand never moved from the direction it pointed in.
Trace’s expression changed from shock to sadness as she dropped her ABC eyes from mine, and her heels scuffed along the carpet as she walked to the steps, gazing floorward. I recrossed my arms, just watching her. As she reached for the door, she looked back up at me.
She seemed both sad and frightened. “We need to,” she began. “I mean, I want…” She trailed off, gazing at me with an uncharacteristic uncertainty.
By now, though, I had no patience left. This had to end before I softened again, gave in and let her kidnap my soul. “We’ll talk,” I promised, knowing what she wanted. At the moment, all I wanted to be was alone. I was angry with Trace, yes, but much more than that, I was furious, disgusted, with myself, with what she’d made me see.
Trace searched my face a moment, then finally nodded and stepped out, closing the door behind her. I stared at it, almost expecting yet another person to burst in. Finally, I stood up straight and stretched my back. It hurt. Ah, well, I thought cynically. Another day, another bruise. Besides, I would have plenty of time for self-loathing and analyzing later. I still had to get through the night.
I took my headphones off and forced myself to go slowly, to think of nothing, to catch and direct my breath as I measured my steps to the door.
This time I locked it.
She Sells Sanctuary
One day I was introduced to power
She hardly spoke—she never said her name
I was preying in my darkest hour
And she whispered to me, “Blood cannot be tamed.
“I Fall”—Life Underwater
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
That night, after I collected my pay, I was so tired I practically crawled home and made straight for the shower, since no one else was around. Trace, I knew, wasn’t there yet, or if she was, she hadn’t come upstairs, and my roommates were still out and about—working, drinking, doing whatever it was they did.
Once in the bathroom, I started the water running in the shower, kicked off my boots, and stripped quickly. Balling the dress up, I tossed it in the hamper, then inspected the stockings. Yep, ruined. Absolutely wrecked. There were several holes along the seam. For a moment, I could feel the bruising strength of Trace’s hands pressing against me, but I shook that feeling off and tossed the nylons into the garbage pail.
I checked my back in the mirror briefly. The promised bruise had materialized and would be tender for a few days, and a few scrapes along my neck stung when I touched them. Ah, well, what was life without a few bruises? Probably nice and painless, I thought wryly.
I wondered if my buddy, you know, my pal, my girl, my best friend, my favorite body part, would end up with a couple of bruises. Trace had been pretty rough, especially when she was ripping through the nylons.
What a fucking event that had been, I mused as I stepped into the showe r. I got soaked as quickly as possible and went through the routine of bathing. Finally, when I’d rinsed off the soap, I stood under the shower itself and simply let the water pour over me.
Trace’s words pounded through my head, so hard that my head ached. It was time to get out so I shut the taps and reached for a towel.
My hair wrapped, I grabbed one of my robes from behind the closed door (I have three of them: tiger stripes, leopard spots, and black), wrapped myself in the black one, and began to rub my aching head with the terry cloth. Suddenly, it occurred to me that perhaps my head hurt because I was a little hung over, and my follow-up thought was maybe, just maybe, Trace had been a little drunk as well, because I could think of nothing else to explain her behavior.
But that made things more confusing, because didn’t alcohol lower your inhibitions? Supposedly, it just lowers your guard; your brain is definitely not functioning well enough to come up with new and novel ideas, thanks to the effects of oxygen deprivation. So what did that mean? Yeah, I’d wanted more between Trace and me, but I didn’t “go” for it, and Trace had pretty much literally attacked me, which was still just unbelievable.
And I’d frozen. What the fuck was up with that? I’d been fine, or at least I’d thought I was, just a little while before she appeared. Was it really the tequila pop? Or was it something else? For a moment there, I’d honestly considered just letting things happen—if I’d just, well, given over, it would have been what Trace needed, it would help her to be whole.
Why fight it or her anyway? I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know that it didn’t matter who Trace was with; she always wanted to be with me in the end. Except perhaps now, after this, this thing, she wouldn’t. I admit that something inside me was afraid, and I wasn’t sure what I was more afraid of—that we’d continue the way we’d been, or that maybe, just maybe, it was finally over and I was free.
Free. That was a strange thought, and I shied away from it. Free from what, really?
But something in my mind insisted that I’d done the right thing, that this whole issue wasn’t just about whether or not we ever fucked. I mean, look at me and Blue, um, Candace. What happened between us was pretty damn intimate, can’t really get much closer, physically. But I felt no tie, no connection to her, other than
a warm friendliness and an honest lust. The only game between us had really boiled down to this: she was interested, was I? And there was no deceit about it. Yes, I was. Okay, maybe it had gone a ABC little further faster than I normally would’ve let it and, for chrissake, in the skybox of all places, but really no harm, no foul. She wanted, I wanted; it was very happily mutual.
Too much, it was too much to think about—the words, the feelings, and this strange sense of shame all floating together. That was weird, the shame, I mean. I didn’t feel any about Candace, but from what had happened with Trace. I felt like my whole body was as raw as my neck, as if I’d lived out that nightmare everyone has sooner or later—you know, the one when you go to school and suddenly realize you’re naked.
I brushed my teeth (I’m a Crest baby), and somewhere during the rinse and spit cycle, I realized that my hands were shaking.
Maybe my blood sugar was too low. It had been quite some time since I’d had anything solid to eat, I rationalized. Besides, that made sense, in a purely biological sort of way.
Wrapped in my robe and stepping out of the bathroom finally, I walked into the kitchen and drank some orange juice. That would take care of the sugar. I left the light on over the stove, since it would shine nice and dimly in the living room, then went to the bedroom that I shared with my roommate, Jackie.
Oh, yeah, roommates. I had two. Captain, otherwise known as Cap, who was a police officer and had a room of his own, and Jackie, a good friend who’d invited me to move in when life became unlivable at my parents’, since they’d given me the boot because I couldn’t fit in with their master plans for my life. But that’s another story.
Fuck it. Since the room, located right off the living room, was really small, Jackie and I shared a bed, which wasn’t quite the hardship that it would seem, given that I spent half my time downstairs in Trace’s. But when Jackie came home, and she would soon, since she worked at another local bar and was probably doing the after-hours hangout, she’d want to talk, at the very least, and I was in no mood to chat or to sleep next to anyone, at all.
I took a pillow from the bed and a blanket from the closet and made myself a nest on the sofa. Why is it that a pullout sofa feels terrible when you pull it out, but leave it closed, and it’s great for sleeping? I was glad I’d left that light on by the stove because I hated sleeping in the pitch-black dark, and Jackie always shut off the small lamp I’d leave lit on the dresser in our room.
Satisfied with my bed engineering, I lay down on my side. Definite mistake. The moment my knees touched, my favorite body part twinged. My poor buddy, all pain and no gain. I didn’t have another pillow, and since I hate to let my head droop to the side and I didn’t feel like sleeping on my back, I scrunched up the blankets between my knees. That was better—not much, but better.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I thought I was dreaming when I heard Jackie come in, talking with Trace. I guess they must have gone to the after-hours together. That wasn’t too surprising. Jackie and Trace had been best friends since high school (in fact, I’d met Trace through Jackie) and were twenty-three and twenty-four, respectively, to my twenty. ABC They were definitely a lot more used to partying than I was, on every level.
“Hey, she’s sleeping.” Jackie’s voice was pitched low.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a full night,” Trace whispered back. “She hooked up with this girl and…” The rest trailed off into a quieter whisper that I couldn’t make out, and I didn’t care. I snuggled tighter under the blanket, forcing myself back to deeper sleep.
In that mostly unconscious state, I thought I heard Trace say that she needed to talk with me, and I heard Jackie say good night and go to bed.
I drifted further into darkness, everything silent, and I was warm, toasty warm. A body pressed against my back, and arms wrapped around and held me firmly, but with love.
I dreamt of the beach, and ocean-colored eyes, and for the first time in ages, held warmly in that embrace, I dreamt of an old friend, maybe the best friend I’d ever had, Samantha, standing before me by the surf as the sun went down, the light catching on the pendant I’d just given her as a birthday present.
She smiled at me in the setting sun. “If you’re ever lonely, come to me. I know what it’s like to be lonely. If people hurt you, because you’re not like them, come to me. I know what it’s like to be different. When you hurt, when you ache, let me take that from you. I ache, too,” I heard as a whisper in my ear. A soft hand caressed my cheek, and the sun, surf, and Samantha disappeared. I had truly been dreaming, after all.
I missed her so much my muscles cramped with the longing, a hard ache that ran through my bones the way it does when you’ve spent the night sleeping cold, and a chill chased after it as I realized it was Trace’s voice I heard. But this time, I really couldn’t move at all; I was just too damned tired. Trace had somehow wrapped herself behind me on the sofa. Her body pressed against mine, her arms held me, her words sank into my brain. Every single one of them broke my heart.
“Let me take care of you. You will never feel lonely, or hurt, or sad again,” she insisted. “Just come to me. Give yourself over to me, make me your world, and I swear you will be mine.” The arm beneath my shoulder pulled me closer, and the warmth, the feeling of genuine affection that poured from her was wonderful. “I will love you and protect you.” She punctuated each promise with a soft kiss and a caress. “You will never, ever, need anything again. I promise you, Nina,” she swore, and kissed my cheek gently.
The warmth, the words, the emotions were tempting, and I wanted to believe them, all of them. I wanted to believe her. I almost gave in because in that moment she felt so like her, so like Samantha. I was going to snuggle deeper into her, throw my arms around Trace and nuzzle against her neck as I’d never done before, but as I shifted my legs, the bruise at their apex throbbed, and instead of turning inward, toward her, I twisted further away, almost onto my stomach, the blanket clutched firmly around me. Samantha would have meant it, would have never hurt me first, would have said those things to me face-to-face, not waited until I was bruised and ABC sleeping.
“No,” I whispered, still only half awake, and safely tucked away, I fell back into a deep sleep.
Trace was gone when I finally woke up, on my stomach and half off the sofa. I blinked a few times and rolled onto my back. Ouch. Bad idea. I’d forgotten about that bruise there and the other one that nestled up in my crotch. Both reminded me of their reality, and I remembered how I’d gotten them.
Geez. What the fuck was I going to do? No way would I tell Jackie or Cap about it. I mean, Jackie and Cap were both friends with Trace first. I wasn’t sure they’d believe me, and even if they did, somehow, I was sort of sure that it was my fault, anyway, which meant that I’d been dumb.
Besides, what was I going to say? It was no secret that I felt strongly for Trace; Cap would probably tell me I was an idiot for not going for it, and Jackie? She’d never, ever, believe it. She’d tell me I misunderstood, that I didn’t understand Trace, that I was just too young, too immature.
I could just imagine Cap—his cocoa face, high and tight military-style buzz cut, and wide, bright grin. “Two, in one night? And one of them Trace? Not bad, kid, not bad,” and he’d slap my shoulder and laugh.
And I could see Jackie’s face as well, auburn hair and porcelain skin broken only by the firm line of her mouth. She probably wouldn’t say a word. Hell, she probably wouldn’t talk to me for a few days, then, at the end of that time, walk in one night after work and start yelling about the spoon in the sink or something. We’d have a big talk, or rather, she would talk, and I would listen, while she told me how and why exactly I was wrong.
I sat up and swung my legs off the sofa, the blanket half covering me, and bracing my hands on my knees, I stared at the floor. It was starting to occur to me that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have the best friends in the world—at least, not to live with.
I stood up and stretched, let
ting the blanket fall to the floor. Everything was a little sore, but that was no big deal. Glancing down, I realized I’d slept in my bathrobe and I had terry-cloth textured skin. I tied the ends of the belt together and crept to the shared bedroom.
Opening the door slowly, I stuck my head in. Jackie was out like a light, and I was surprised to see she had her arm thrown over Trace, who was asleep on top of the blankets in a T-shirt, facing the wall.
I didn’t want to wake either of them, so I slipped very quietly to the closet where our clothes were and grabbed a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, some pants, socks, underwear—you know, the usual. It didn’t matter what it looked like; most of it was black, anyway.
As I sneaked back to the door, Trace shifted.
“Nina,” she called quietly. I froze in place. I certainly wasn’t ready to talk with her. Trace moved again and resettled on her side. Good. She was just sleeping. A part of me hoped she had nightmares, then quickly felt guilty. I knew better than most that she did.
Back in the living room, I dumped my stuff on the sofa and neatly folded the blanket.
If you sat on the couch, the bedroom was behind you, TV in front, windows to the left, kitchen to the right, and the door to Cap’s bedroom just a bit past. Since his door was firmly shut, which it hadn’t been when I’d gotten in last night, he was home and sleeping too.
Good. I didn’t want to deal with anyone, anyway.
I dressed and began a set of floor stretches. The thigh stretches were a little more painful than usual, but otherwise, everything was in good working order. Warmed up, I was ready to go for a run. I didn’t exercise all the time, but today seemed like a good day. Running is similar to swimming in that your mind goes blank sort of, but not really. Somehow, while you’re focusing on the very basic steps of breathing and moving simultaneously, your brain figures all sorts of things out. Besides, exercise, especially strenuous exercise, was and is good for breaking down all the stuff your body creates when it’s stressed, and I was for sure feeling stressed.