Instant Love: Fiction

by Jami Attenberg

  Holly is stuck with this clown makeup for the rest of the night.

  CHRISTIAN IS LATE picking up Holly. Christian is always late picking up Holly. Usually she meets him at the Taco Bell after school, on nights she doesn’t have to work. She sits on the picnic bench and does some homework and tries to look casual, like she doesn’t have a secret. (If she could somehow work it out that people knew she had a secret, without actually knowing what that secret was, that would be perfect, but she doesn’t think it works that way.) Eventually Christian picks her up in the parking lot and apologizes for being late and blames it on his dad, because it is always his dad’s fault.

  Everything is his dad’s fault, except when it is his mother’s fault, Holly has learned. His dad is too old, his dad is too sick, his dad won’t ante up with the cash. His mother isn’t even worth talking about, except when he is really drunk. A few months ago she kicked him out of her house, three towns over. She doesn’t love him anymore. That’s all he’ll say.

  She met his father once. He was in a wheelchair, and he seemed so excited to meet her. He shook her hand and grabbed her wrist and held it. It only freaked her out a little bit.

  When Christian is done blaming his dad, they drive through the drive-through and get Nachos BellGrande and a bunch of tacos and two Pepsis, and then they go to his house and eat it and then make out with their awful taco breath. Sometimes they drink beer and then they have beer breath. Tonight he has promised vodka, but that doesn’t really taste like anything at all.

  She stands and waits with Shelly, both of them behind the counter with their matching eyelids and skimpy T-shirts and armpits deodorized within an inch of their lives. Shelly has never met him. Shelly wants to see him. Shelly wants to know who her secret boyfriend is. How exciting! A secret boyfriend. Everyone in the store is almost ready to leave: the pharmacist, Christine, who has a one-year-old and an unemployed load of a husband waiting for her at home; the stockboy, Mario, who always wears red shirts and black pants and has a unibrow; and the delivery guy, Schneider, who is probably too old to be a delivery guy—he’s well into his thirties—but Holly couldn’t imagine him doing anything else, the way he shuffles and sneers and seems completely devoid of any math skills. More than any of the other employees, he’s the one who consistently stares at Shelly’s ass.

  They all want to go home, and she is standing there, waiting, like a jackass.

  Christian walks into the pharmacy, straight to the back counter where Holly and Shelly are standing. He is wearing a black sweater with holes in both elbows and camouflage pants with ties at the bottom and huge pockets at the thighs. His hair is slicked back—He’s fresh out of the shower, she thinks. He showered! For our date!—so she sees the shaved sides of his head. He is one perfect smooth person now. A tiny cross earring dangles from his right ear. Forgotten is the tardiness, forgotten is the trashiness, forgotten are the constant complaints. She is suddenly swooning with pride that this is her boyfriend.

  He looks at her and smiles, and he looks at Shelly and stops.

  “You have the same…” He motions with his finger at his eyes. He keeps looking at her. “It looks nice,” he says. He is still looking at Shelly.

  “Thanks,” Holly says. Over here, she thinks. I am over here.

  She introduces them, pauses for a breath, and then she says, We’ve got to go, no really, we’re late as it is. Late for what? He is still staring at Shelly. Holly hustles him out the door.

  I’ve got to move fast is all she is thinking.

  WHEN HOLLY LOOKS back as she leaves, she sees Shelly is staring at her, and she waves. Shelly does not wave back because she does not see Holly wave because she is staring at Christian.

  IN THE BASEMENT, in the basement, with the vodka and the kissing, Holly is urgent and pushy. She drinks two vodka and cranberries in a half hour. She takes off her bra in the bathroom and shoves it in her purse. Then she says screw it, and takes off her underpants, too. She can barely look at herself in the mirror, but she puts on more lipstick.

  When she returns he is lying on the black leather couch. Come here baby, he says. She joins him. She starts to lie next to him, but then she moves on top of him. He puts his hands on her ass. She sits up, straddles him, and he puts his hands on her waist and then moves them up to the undersides of her breasts, first outside her shirt, and then underneath it.

  Hands combined flat on nipples plus two vodka and cranberries equals a deeper, faster breath.

  You’re definitely trying to seduce me, he says.

  Yes, she says. Yes, I am.

  HE HAS HIS hands down there afterward, where Holly has shaved her hair into an upside-down triangle. She shaved it that way because she is a math geek and she likes things to be neat and tidy and have forty-five-degree angles. He forms a “V” with the index and middle fingers on his right hand and tops it with the index finger of his left hand, then frames her triangle and peers through.

  “Your bush is sexy,” he says. Your bush.

  LATER: “So that girl you work with seems really cool.”

  “You only met her for a minute. How could you tell?” She snaps at him like a trap around an animal’s foot. She has just been lying there waiting for this.

  “She just did. I’m sorry. You’re the one who’s always talking about her.”

  “She’s cool, yes.” Miserably.

  SHE IS LEARNING that people get sick of each other very quickly.

  THE NEXT DAY Christian and Shelly hang out at Taco Bell. Holly knows they hang out at Taco Bell because she hears about it from Shelly a week later, as they start their shift together, the two of them straightening their pharmacy smocks, cuffing the sleeves, buttoning the oversized buttons. Shelly’s gray eyes are lit up with the exuberance that comes with a new friendship as she tells Holly the details: how he had to rush a new prescription for his father who was so sick, she didn’t realize how sick he was—did you, Holly?—how it was right around her break, so they figured it might be cool to hang out, get to know each other, her boyfriend and her best friend from work; and how all they did was talk about her the whole time, how smart she is, how great it is that you’re going to be a doctor, how much we’ll both miss you when you go away to college in the fall.

  Isn’t that awesome? That your boyfriend and your best friend from work are friends now? And you know, neither one of us knows a lot of people, both of us are so new in town. So like, how great is it that we each have a new friend?

  It was true, Shelly didn’t have a lot of friends, and neither did Christian. With their troubled pasts and their bad reputations and their unremarkable academic records. How could she argue with that?

  HE HAS KNOWN about it for days, of course, and never mentioned it.

  ON THEIR NEXT shift together, Shelly shows up late, with two round red hickeys suctioned on her neck. She passes Holly, fast, and heads straight to the back bathroom, but the bruises are unmistakable. She’s probably putting concealer on them, thinks Holly. She had done so herself just two weeks before.

  Holly counts out fourteen penicillin tablets for Mrs. Packer, who is leaning against the counter near the echinacea display.

  She is gabby, Mrs. Packer. Her daughter Mindy got sick over the weekend. She tells this to the store at large.

  “It started with a little cough Saturday morning,” says Mrs. Packer, “and by Sunday afternoon she could barely speak. She’s going to miss auditions for the school play.” Mrs. Packer shakes her head grimly, as if Mindy were about to lose a limb.

  Shelly ducks through the storeroom door and slides past Holly toward her post in front of the lottery machine.

  “They’re doing Oklahoma! this year. Mindy wanted to play Ado Annie,” Mrs. Packer says.

  “The slut,” says Holly.

  Mrs. Packer says, “What?” It only works for Mrs. Packer if she’s the only one talking.

  “Ado Annie,” says Holly. “She’s the slut, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose she is, although that’s not ex
actly the word I would use.”

  “That’s the word I would use,” says Holly.

  SO THIS ONE I don’t get to keep, she thinks.

  LATER WHEN THEY go to Taco Bell on break, Shelly orders a bean burrito instead of her usual steak taco. “I’m trying vegetarianism now,” announces Shelly when the counter guy tries to ring up her regular order.

  Holly doesn’t question it. Holly doesn’t even want to know. “Really?” she says. Holly has no idea what it sounds like when it comes out of her mouth; she only knows the conversation ends immediately.

  LOOK, WHAT were you going to do with him anyway? Marry him?

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, there is a summit of sorts, held on a picnic bench in a small park near the junior-high school. Christian has lured Holly there with the promise of a picnic, but when she arrives he is seated only with a beer wrapped in paper, and a pack of Camel Lights, the top of the box half-cocked, one cigarette jutting out from the rest. She joins him on the bench, and they sit for a while, space between them, and quietly watch two young girls, identical sisters in matching athletic shirts and shorts, race up and down the wide expanse of grass. They are trying to best each other with a soccer ball. Their hair is long and red and unruly, held back barely with barrettes and ponytail holders. Their cheeks are flushed. There are freckles on their arms. They are wearing training bras masquerading as sports bras. They are fierce. When one finally breaks loose, the other flies gracefully after her, finally tackling her to the ground. She sits on top of her, laughing, until her sister reaches up and smacks her in the face. The sister on top grabs a fistful of the other’s hair, and it is on, they are rolling and pinching and biting and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop, until a woman passing through the park with a baby carriage yells at them to cut it out. They start laughing, the two of them, and roll off each other. They lie on their backs and laugh and laugh and look up at the sky, which on this day is gray and thick with chunky dark clouds.

  It could rain at any minute.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” says Holly. She rolls her eyes to the sky.

  Christian checks his watch. He has a watch? He looks past Holly, past the twins, who are now practicing headstands, and then, finally, he sees what he is looking for, and he smiles a drunken smile, which makes no sense to Holly because it is only two in the afternoon. She turns and sees Shelly approaching, almost running, the points of her high-heeled boots sinking into the grass.

  Shelly sits on the far end of the picnic table across from Christian, and she reaches out her hand toward him, lays it flat, waiting for the moment he will reach back for hers. And then she says, “We have something to tell you,” in such a dramatic fashion it is instantly clear to Holly that all they have talked about for days and days was this moment, that they have been waiting to utter these words, to feel the simultaneous thrill and guilt race through their bodies like a shot of alcohol at the beginning of the night.

  And even though Holly is not surprised, she is still hurt, and sad, because now she’s going to have to be a complete bitch to them.

  HELLO, MA’AM, this is Shelly’s friend from work, Holly Stoner, and I don’t know how to tell you this, but I thought you should know, I mean I would want to know, considering what’s happened to her in the past with that man, yes, ma’am, I know it was a long time ago, I know that’s none of my business, but what’s happening now, like, I’m her friend, so I think maybe it is my business? Anyway, look, she’s dating someone, he’s older, like, not in high school anymore, over eighteen, yes, definitely, anyway, they’re doing it, ma’am. And technically, that is rape, you know? He’s raping her. I don’t think it’s right, do you?

  SHELLY DOESN’T TALK to Holly anymore after her totally unforgivable act of betrayal. (That’s what it said on the note that she slipped in Holly’s locker.) Also, she wears his New Order T-shirt with the hole in the sleeve every day to work for a month. It smells like cigarettes. She leans against the lottery machine, perfectly lined eyes staring out toward the birthday-card carousel, and fingers the bottom of the shirt, the ratty cuffs of the sleeves, and the jagged cigarette-burn hole. She is dreaming of her eighteenth birthday.

  Like I care, thinks Holly. She has already packed up her shirt in the closet. She likes Sonic Youth now, and the Pixies, bands that have girls who are messy and tough. She is sick of faggy boys who strum their guitars and cry and people who work beneath their potential. She is so over it. In a year she will be somewhere new, studying to be a doctor, a hero, a rock star, and they will still be there, smoking their goddamn cigarettes and eating their stupid vegetarian burritos. In a way I feel sorry for them, she thinks. In a way.

  At night she scrubs her face, until her skin is raw and dry and pink, until nothing is left but Holly. She scrubs until it stings.

  Sarah Lee left Boston in a hurry. There was a pregnancy, and an abortion, and also an arrest. Not of her, but of him, the boyfriend, the one who had gone sour, a crying shame. The boyfriend from high school, from freshman year to senior year, who had taken her under his denim-jacket-clad arm, the jacket with the cigarette-pack outline worn through the right pocket, a patch of a pot leaf sewn on the shoulder. Under that jacket arm she stayed for four years, as he nurtured and loved her, and didn’t care if she stuttered, and stared down her three older brothers when they were being dicks to her (and they were always being dicks to her), and looked at all her drawings and told her she was brilliant, that’s some great stuff, draw me again, will you, babe? That one, the kind one, with the early stubble, who went on tour one summer with the Dead (Sarah Lee was fiercely and resolutely denied that option by her mother), and when he came back he started buying and selling large quantities of pot, and mushrooms too, so much so that people started calling him “the Ounce” behind his back, until finally there was simply no other choice for the local police but to bust his ass. The pregnancy was two months before the arrest, the abortion one week afterward (Sarah Lee felt nothing for years about it, until she started therapy, and then she cried for a night and pronounced herself “over it”), and the flight to Seattle to stay in the basement apartment of the house of Cousin Nancy, a nurse in a cancer ward, occurred one week after that.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” her mother had said to her. “You’re going to enroll in community college. I’ve checked already, you can still sign up through the end of the month. Take art classes or whatever you want, I really don’t care, Miss Sarah. Just get involved in something. Idle minds, miss. Idle minds. Also you’re going to stop smoking. And you’re going to cut your hair. Don’t dye it again. It looks atrocious. And you’re going to stop wearing those goddamn jeans. You can’t even take them with you. In fact, take them off right now.”

  Sarah Lee stared up at her mother standing there, tidy and pressed and twitching in their kitchen. She didn’t know what her mother was going to do next. There had been a flurry of commands in recent weeks; her mother was in emergency mode. Sarah had been letting her run her mouth and waiting to see what stuck. It’s funny what sticks.

  “This instant, Sarah,” she said.

  Sarah stood, unbuttoned, unzipped, bent, one leg, then the other. She handed the jeans to her mother. There were holes in the knees. Sarah had drawn a picture of her boyfriend on the back pocket in magic marker. Her mother clenched the jeans, looked as if she were going to rip them in two. Sarah sat back in the chair in her underpants. The plastic cover of the chair felt clammy against her legs.

  There was more after that. No contact of any kind with the boyfriend. College applications. And even though she doesn’t like church, she’s going to church from now on. Every weekend. Plus a job, any job. A new attitude. Get your act together. Pronto.

  SARAH LEE SAT at a wide wooden picnic table on the back porch of a stranger’s house, trying to figure out what to do next. Though the rain had stopped a few hours before, the wood was still damp, and she could feel her jeans soaking through, but she didn’t want to go inside. Outside was where her f
riend was, and it was good to stick with a friend at a stranger’s party; outside was where it smelled good, the flowers in the garden, plus the wood and the rain and the grass smelled rich and sweet together. But outside was also where it was quiet, and she didn’t like to meet people in silence—her stutter was more obvious then, and sometimes after that, people stopped listening to her completely. (Which is worse? To have never been acknowledged, or to be discarded? She could never decide.) She had compensated tonight by smoking some pot, which relaxed her, slightly stunned her nervousness.

  Earlier her cousin had made her stew. She did this every Friday, invited Sarah upstairs for big bowls of her specialty, a spicy stew with thick chunks of beef and tomatoes, sometimes with sweet carrots and cabbage, whatever looked good at the market. Her cousin wanted to make sure she was getting enough iron. Iron was very important, said Nancy. She had a lot of opinions about what was important: fresh air, exercise, fruits, vegetables, and Democrats. Sarah listened to whatever she had to say, she didn’t mind. Sometimes Sarah would tell her about her art classes, or funny stories from her job at the bakery. None of Nancy’s work stories were funny—it was almost always about another person dying—so she kept them to a minimum. They dipped hunks of bread Sarah brought from work into the stew, clinked together their glasses of red wine (one a day, also important), they rubbed their bellies at the end of the meal and laughed. Sarah thought Nancy was an all-right lady. A little lonely, but all right.