by Peter Seth
That stopped her.
“You’ve used this Eric thing to tease me ever since we met,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” she said, pretending to be innocent.
“I know you’ve seen him,” I said, walking toward her. “I’m not stupid. You’re very pretty! Guys are after you. You get bored. I understand that.”
“What are you saying?” she said, putting down the bottle on the bar.
“It’s why I have a problem trusting you one hundred percent,” I said.
“What do you mean, you have a problem?” Rachel repeated, her face open with surprise and disappointment.
“You broke up with me once,” I said. My thoughts were rolling now, and I was unable to stop. “So there’s this shadow over everything –”
“What shadow? You don’t know what I’ve had to live through –” she interrupted.
“Always this ‘Eric’ hanging in the wings –”
“Would you stop talking about Eric!” she shouted, slamming her fists on the bar. “There is no Eric! ‘Eric’ is a joke, an old joke. There was an Eric, but he moved away from here. In the sixth grade!”
“Wait a second: What do you mean?” I said, flat-out stunned by what she was saying.
“Oh, sure, I loved Eric – in sixth grade! Nanci did too. Every girl in the school did! He was gorgeous. He looked like Ricky Nelson. But he moved to New Jersey. We cried for a week. But that was a long time ago.”
“But what about all the letters you got at Mooncliff from Eric?”
“Oh, please!” said Rachel, bringing her hands together briefly in prayer. “Sometimes Nanci used to sign her letters to me ‘Love, Eric’ – as a joke! The girls in my bunk read the letter and thought there was this guy named Eric who loved me. So I just let them think it.”
“But why?” I asked, my mind spinning back to those first mentions of Eric. “Just for fun?”
“What?” she shot back. “You didn’t lie to the Doggies? You didn’t mess with their heads? They looked at my personal letters! Do you think I owed them the truth about anything?”
My mind started reliving all the comments and hints about Eric – what exactly she had said, and what other people had said. I couldn’t have concocted the entire thing.
“Really, baby,” said Rachel earnestly. “‘Eric’ has been a joke between Nanci and me for years! He was like a character we made up! The ideal boyfriend! When we were little, we used to have sleepovers and take turns pretending to be Eric. At camp, I would sign my letters to her ‘Love, Eric!’ It wasn’t anyone real!”
“Then why did Nanci say that you were seeing Eric?” I asked.
“Because she was.”
We both turned around and saw Nanci standing there, all in boys’ clothing. A white shirt and striped tie, dark pants, and a dark sports jacket. She even had her short dark hair combed over and slicked down, like a little boy’s haircut.
“Ta-daa!” said Nanci with a delighted smirk across her face, making a clumsy little bow forward from her waist. She looked like an enormous little boy. I saw that she had dropped her big purse in the corner. Little boys don’t carry big purses.
Both Rachel and I looked at her, stunned.
“Are you out of your mind?” said Rachel.
“What?” replied Nanci, turning around in place, showing off her clothes. “You don’t like my Eric outfit?”
“Why did you tell him I was seeing someone named Eric?” said Rachel directly, walking straight toward Nanci.
“It was just a joke!” protested Nanci. “Just to keep him on his toes and in love with you. ‘Boys are toys!’ Don’t you remember? There was nothing wrong with him thinking there was a rival out there. Not if it made him love you even more.”
“But it wasn’t true!” said Rachel. “Why would you do that? That’s disgusting! You were our friend.”
“I’m not the one who broke up with him, Rachel,” said Nanci. “That was all your doing.”
By now, I admit my mind was spinning; I didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful. Angry at Nanci for lying, but grateful that there was no Eric. And I couldn’t believe I’d heard “boys are toys” again, this time out of Nanci’s mouth.
Rachel was half in tears. “But all the help you gave us, all the phone calls you made –”
Finally, I spoke. “Yeah, all those phone calls.”
“I was just helping you two stay close!” said Nanci, backing up. “I did everything for you. I drove you places. I gave him your messages.”
“But why would you make things up?” demanded Rachel. “You know what I was having to deal with, with Hell-eanor!”
I could see that Nanci/Eric was sweating, on the defensive.
“But I was helping you!” Nanci said. “You see he’s your lapdog, just like you wanted.”
“Helping? How?” shot back Rachel. “How were you helping? By planting doubt in his mind?”
“Listen,” I got between them. “Hold on for a second!”
“I don’t know why you’re so upset, Rachel. You love Eric!” Nanci reasoned. “When we were little and had sleepovers, we used to take turns being Eric.”
“Maybe that’s what you really love!” Rachel shouted back. “Being Eric! You loved getting under the covers with me! You probably miss those days.”
“No,” said Nanci back. “Maybe it’s you who needs real girl love, not me!”
For an instant, I thought that Rachel was going to hit Nanci or something, and I wanted to stop anything like that from happening.
“Wait!” I said, making space between the two of them. “Nanci. I don’t understand why you said what you said –”
“I told you what I thought –” she sputtered.
“That is completely ridiculous –” Rachel cut her off.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Can we just stop for a second?”
My loud voice made them both step back a little.
“I don’t know exactly what happened, exactly what went on –” I continued in a rational manner, but Rachel interrupted me.
“Nanci, how could you – ?” Rachel fumed.
I put my hand on Rachel’s forearm and held it firmly.
“Can we just hold on?” I said, slower and louder.
The girls paused, breathing heavily.
“Maybe now isn’t the time we should relive the past,” I said, suppressing my own zillion questions for moment. “Let’s just take a second –”
“And play more poker!” snapped Rachel. “Strip poker.”
Her eyes flashed with the dare.
“Come on, ‘Eric,’” she taunted Nanci. “Let’s play for real. Now! This’ll be fun. You’ll get what you deserve. But you better start playing better, or he’s going to see your naked body. I don’t know if he’s ready for that.”
I could see that Rachel’s comment really hurt Nanci, the way she flinched, the tears that momentarily filled her eyes. But Nanci was not going to admit that she was hurt.
“OK, Rachel,” said Nanci. “Let’s play.”
She sat back down at the coffee table and shuffled the cards, breathing a little heavily.
With all the tension in the air, I didn’t know if that was the best thing to do, but we all sat back down at the coffee table. And we all took long drinks from our whiskey sour glasses. I dealt from the deck that Nanci had freshly shuffled.
“Draw,” I said. “Deuces wild.”
“What about suicide kings?” asked Nanci as she picked up her cards as I dealt them.
“You’re not supposed to pick up your cards until they’re all dealt,” said Rachel.
“Who says?” snapped Nanci.
“Those are the rules of poker,” replied Rachel.
“Well, I go by my own rules,” said Nanci.
“Your play, Nanci,” I
said. “Or Eric. Or whoever you are. How many do you want?”
“Wait a second!” she said. “Let me look.”
She studied her cards, then looked at both Rachel and me.
“Two,” she said as she tossed two cards into the middle.
I dealt her the two cards and asked Rachel, “How many?”
“Three,” said Rachel, which elicited a confident grunt from Nanci.
I gave her the three cards and said, “I’ll take two too. Two, also.”
I discarded my two bad cards and looked at my hand. I kept a pair of tens and a king, and I drew another king and a three. Two pair. That could win. These girls were not very good poker players . . . thank goodness.
“Now what?” said Nanci.
“Whoever has the worst hand has to strip,” I said.
“What about betting?” asked Rachel.
Both Nanci and I yelled, “No!” Which, I guess, indicated the relative strength of our hands.
“Let’s just play these out, Rache’, OK?” I said.
“OK,” she said. “Whattaya got?”
It turned out that Rachel won that hand with three fours, beating my two pair and Nanci’s pair of aces.
“Low hand strips!” ordered Rachel, pointing at Nanci. “Let’s go!”
There was a big, cruel smile on Rachel’s face as she sat back to watch Nanci take something off.
Nanci screwed a crooked smile on her face and, with that side-shake of hers, rolled up to a standing position. She stood there, in Eric clothes, looking down on us. Then she took off her sports jacket and dropped it in the middle of the table. It didn’t reveal anything.
“That’s a start,” said Rachel maliciously. “But soon, we’ll have you buck-naked and jiggly.”
Nanci was startled by that, and so was I. I knew very well Rachel’s capacity for mockery and vengeance; she had had to develop those “skills” to survive in that house. But I felt there was something new and nasty brewing here. Nanci had stepped over a line, and Rachel was going to make her pay for it.
“I have to tinkle,” said Rachel, suddenly standing up.
“‘Tinkle’?” chirped Nanci, derisively.
“I’m sorry,” said Rachel primly. “But that’s what I was taught to say. Do you prefer ‘urinate’?”
I could tell from the distinct way that Rachel was trying to pronounce her words that she was getting buzzed from the whiskey sours.
She stepped away from the coffee table and walked toward the little bathroom – excuse me, the “powder room” – in the corner of the room by the bar.
“You two guys talk amongst yourselves,” sang out Rachel. “Play with your whatever, your selves.”
She skipped away from the table, nimble on her little feet, and disappeared behind the bar and into the “powder room.”
I instantly turned on Nanci.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Nanci replied with frost in her voice.
“Why did you tell me she was seeing this Eric?”
“But she wasn’t, was she?”
“But why lie to me?”
“It wasn’t about you,” she defended herself.
“OK,” I said, forcing her to look in my face. “If it wasn’t about me, then it was about Rachel. What do you have against her?”
Nanci looked down at the men’s tie laying on her belly and smoothed it. The men’s clothes – they must have been her father’s or brother’s – looked extra-baggy on her, and she knew it. Her masquerade/joke might have been backfiring on her, but she wasn’t deterred: she fought back.
“I know that Rachel is beautiful,” Nanci said, with reason in her voice. “She is smart and funny and attractive and all that. She is a very . . . magnetic person. But she is a very troubled person, getting away with things her whole life, and, ultimately, I think she’s a dangerous person.”
“You know what?” I said. “Finally . . . I think you’re just plain jealous of her.”
“Me, jealous?” said Nanci with a snort. “Hah!”
“You live vicariously through her,” I went after her. “You sit all alone in your room with your drawings and your hash – and you wish you were Rachel!”
“That is nonsense!” said Nanci, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.
“Then why do you spend so much time around her?” I nailed her. “Why is that? Tell me that!”
Rachel came out of the powder room, the sound of the toilet flushing behind her, so I don’t think she heard anything of what Nanci and I said. At least she didn’t act that way when she came back to the table.
“I should have put on more layers of clothing! That’s for sure,” she said impishly, sitting down on the couch. “Who wants more whiskey sour, and who deals?”
Rachel lost the next hand, though it didn’t seem to bother her as she slowly and sexily slid out of her jeans. She turned around as she inched the jeans over her hips and down her legs. Then she gently stepped out of them and kicked them aside, showing off her legs. It was months after summer, but she still seemed to have a tan, a healthy color in her skin. (To tell you the truth, I seldom saw her bare legs in this much light.) She was left wearing silky pink panties, with a little bow in the front.
“There!” she said sitting back down, her face glowing with excitement, for the game and for whatever she was planning to do to Nanci. I knew that look in Rachel’s eye. Something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what.
Nanci lost the next hand. She tried for a flush and missed.
“Strip!” ordered Rachel, taking another drink of the bug juice.
Not removing her eyes from Rachel’s, Nanci/Eric stood up with her roll-move and undid her black, baggy men’s pants – the belt buckle, then the button, then the zipper – and let them fall to the floor. There she stood, on her pale, chubby legs, like piano legs, topped by the big, wide triangle of her white panties.
No one had to say anything.
I made sure to lose the next hand. I didn’t want to get too far ahead – or behind – in the “race” to undress. I smiled to myself as I broke up a pair of aces and wound up losing my shirt, literally. But as Nanci said before, even if I lose, I win.
By the time we played a few more hands, we had finished most of the second pitcher of bug juice, and Nanci and Rachel were down to their bras and panties. My mind was spinning happily; I didn’t know where the night was going, and Rachel and Nanci were building to some kind of big fight, but honestly, I really couldn’t care all that much because there was all this girl-flesh in front of me, right there.
“Change of game!” called out Rachel as she quickly dealt out another hand of draw poker.
“You can’t do that!” scoffed Nanci, tucking her too-short hair behind her ears.
“Sure, I can!” said Rachel happily. “My house – my cards – my deal. Instead of betting clothes, this hand we bet kisses!”
I shot a look at Rachel and saw the mischief in her eyes. She was making up the rules as she went along, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Or me. I could see how excited she was, and though I wasn’t sure in which direction her excitement would lead us – to something good or something bad – whatever way she went, I was going along for the ride. I was just happy to be back with her. I remembered those pink panties with the little bow.
“Whoever loses . . . has to kiss whoever the winner says,” said Rachel, gathering up her cards greedily.
We looked at our cards, contemplating them and the new rules.
“I’ll take two,” I said, shooting a quick smile to Rachel.
She dealt me the cards and said, “This will be the first boy Nanci’s kissed in ten years. Other than her relatives. No offense.”
“I kissed your father,” said Nanci, looking down at her cards.
“You what?” said Rachel.
“You think you know so much, Rachel,” said Nanci with a smirk. “But you don’t know everything!”
“You’re lying,” said Rachel, going back to her cards.
“Your father put the moves on me before he moved out,” said Nanci, looking directly at Rachel, who recoiled as if she had been slapped.
I tried to head off an explosion.
“She’s just saying that to upset you,” I put in, but Nanci cut me off.
“What do you know, Mr. Ivy League?” she shot back. “You’re still looking for Eric to come walking in!”
“I wouldn’t bring that up if I were you!” I said, sitting straight up on the ottoman and pointing right at her face. “How many cards do you want?”
“Four,” said Nanci. “I have an ace.”
Rachel snickered derisively, “I’m not going to say anything about that,” and dealt the cards in front of Nanci.
“Straight flush!” screamed Rachel when she won. “I guess my luck is finally turning.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Nanci sourly.
“Luck evens out,” I pronounced. “It’s one of the laws of nature.”
“OK, loser,” said Rachel, addressing Nanci with savage delight. “Now you have to kiss him” – she waited a malicious little moment, and added tauntingly – “unless you want to kiss me more.”
Nanci said, “Rachel, why are you being so horrible tonight?”
Rachel snapped back with a laugh, “Just be happy I invited you over here. You’re lucky that I let you into my life. Or else you’d be stuck in your room with your hash, your inhaler, and your art.”
Nanci flinched and stammered back, “You let me into your life? Are you – you don’t know how much of a joke that is.”
“So why don’t you kiss me instead of him?” said Rachel mockingly. “That’s what you really want.”
Rachel’s eyes sparkled with malice as she watched Nanci. I really didn’t know what to think: Was Nanci really in love with Rachel all along? It never occurred to me, though I’ll admit I’m kind of an innocent on these things. It might seem hard to believe now, but it’s the way I was then.
“No,” said Nanci curtly. “I’ll kiss him.”