The music playing downstairs suddenly shuts off and all the girls look up startled as though staring at a trapped bird in the room. They glance at the intercom speakers. The quiet turns to reverb before the air clears again and there is the sound of Tim clearing his throat, a dozen throats in unison in one dozen speakers all over the house. He clears his throat again.
Tim says, Night shift. Five minutes.
Amber leans on the pool table, closes one eye to focus, and sinks two balls with one strike. Smiling, she says, Come on, ladies. Time to make that dollar.
Even the dog rises.
The speakers vibrate again: Five minutes.
All the girls walk in pairs from one end of the living room to the narrow wooden stairs at the end of the hallway, Amber walking ahead of them in the dark, playing a ukulele, entranced in a song. Suddenly she is singing and her singing is breathtaking and the women follow her. Amber sings, Songs keep coming even happy to be sad, and her body relaxes into the faint echo of her voice. The girls murmur and yawn, rank and file, holding wineglasses and water bottles. Nice little cocktails. Everyone is here for a reason and that reason is to get a little bit more destroyed.
It’s never as easy as it seems, walking from point A to the next, Corvus thinks. Something shifts and aches. Corvus looks at her hands before she, too, gets up and walks over, following the pack, lighting her last cigarette, alone in the bright room. It feels so good to walk. She drifts in and out, past and present vistas, quietly transported. The pit bull follows her but stops before the stairs and whimpers at the threshold of the door as though approaching deep, deep water. He looks measurably freaked out.
She asks, What’s wrong, baby?
Corvus can see Tim at the bottom of the stairs, only part of his face visible in the light.
The pit bull keeps crying and clenching and looking down.
Corvus says, The dog is afraid of you.
Tim looks sideways at something and says, He’s a smart dog.
Looking up at her, Tim says, Fear is healthy.
Corvus breathes and exhales smoke, feeling wide awake.
Do you have another one of those?
Corvus says, No, it’s my last one, and she gently tugs the dog’s ears and walks two steps at a time down toward Tim. Her pace is eager, and the smoke rises. The dog, head lowered, whimpers shrill cries even after she leaves earshot, moving her body closer and closer toward the bright stupid confetti. He keeps watching her before she disappears in black and white. Although he is brave, there is not enough dog in the dog to move him past the threshold. His legs can’t move but he can wait for her. It can be five minutes, an hour, weeks, or forever, and he can still stand there, be a sentinel, and wait for her.
Corvus drinks icy white wine to cool her warm face and watches Tim mumble something under his breath as he makes the bed, fluffing the silk pillows and checking to see if he likes the mood lighting through the viewfinder. The camera hums in his hands. The set is the same as yesterday: tripod, red velvet curtains surrounding the bed, a forgotten broom tucked away in an off-camera corner. Everything seems poised to get better.
She tilts her head back and wants something. The torture Corvus feels on most days is certain but at least she has an active inner life, she thinks. She manages peace and quiet in her contemplation, dependent on absolutely no one but herself to create the worlds in her mind. The beach, the woods. The blue house in the city, in the valley, on the farm where she will never live. She is never alone because she is always alone, her private koan, her rock within a rock.
In the light, Corvus yawns and pops her ears, out of focus on the screen of the camera.
Tim walks closer to the girls but doesn’t say anything. He looks into a handheld camera and mumbles incoherently. Corvus can hear him now. Tim says, I am searching for beauty. It is happening right now.
She notices how soft his voice is.
Amber approaches on Rollerblades. The noise, the grinding screech of the wheels on the hardwood, is comforting. Tim walks over and kisses Amber on the back of her neck, kisses her hair, and says, Go to the bed.
Looking at the fallen confetti and pillow feathers spread all over the polished furniture, the rows of empty beds, Corvus feels her heart contract a little with fear. This seems different. It seems special, the way everything is arranged. The set is much cleaner than Corvus has ever seen it, and it’s as though Tim is being more careful. There are bottles of champagne set in bowls of ice all around the room. There is powder on Tim’s nose and fingertips. He is sharing his entire stock for the shoot tonight and says, Enjoy the pharmacy.
Worry moves through Corvus. She almost says, Amber.
All the other girls flatten against the wall, most of them topless or fully nude, except for Corvus in her sweater, again the one black sheep in the group. The ringing in her ears is gone and she can hear clearly now.
Spread like a star flat on her back on the bedding, Amber has no tan lines, the life behind her eyes drug-coated and miles and miles away. The ceiling is one grandiose painting of lush clouds.
Tim starts recording and begins undressing. There is something handsome in his hostility, the tension in his shoulders, a twisted, charming thing he does that Corvus can identify. He makes you want to know why he’s angry and he never gives an inch. Her face is still warm. Tim announces he has a new cock ring.
He clenches his hand into a hard fist and starts smacking Amber in the face, rapidly punching her cheeks and nose. The metal bedsprings squeak with each smack, and Corvus screams with no sound, her blood on fire. The sounds grow wet, like slabs of meat falling to the ground. Corvus covers her mouth with her hands before she sprints over, making out Amber’s quiet moans, the sounds her skin and bones make. The other women, all drugged out of their minds, look at one another, more confused than afraid. Some hold hands; some rub their gums and their teeth. The lights stay bright.
Tim senses Corvus behind him and quickly jumps off the bed, walking with a deadpan look on his face into the camera’s line of vision before shutting it off. He looks into Corvus’s eyes and says, It’s unbelievable how things can dovetail, so fast and so bad.
Corvus almost says something, but a hard breath in her lungs makes her pause, before Tim’s head knocks violently forward, his eyelids fluttering. He falls to the floor and, behind him, Amber continues hitting him with the dull end of a broomstick, all over his body with no discretion. Amber takes a moment, looks at Tim lying there on the ground, and drips and says, I can take a beating, and starts beating him again. Corvus can hear two things: the broom and flesh. The broom handle is made of solid gold.
A timer releases bright confetti from the ceiling, synced right at the storyboard’s predicted climax. It comes like clockwork, raining in every color Corvus could ever want to see.
Corvus repeats softly, I can take a beating.
It seems like many moments, the length of time it takes going from dream to dream, before Amber walks over, breathing heavily, and says, Let’s go. We should go.
Amber says, Let’s go find our tapes first.
Corvus remembers and says, Our tapes.
The room is a mess. The other girls look around the bloodied basement in awe as though everything has changed, because everything has. Some of the girls are getting up, running their hands through their hair, silent witnesses. Corvus jogs up the stairs, her wrist held by Amber, and looks down on everything and everyone else. She tells herself she needs to be present. She needs to be here. She looks at Tim lying facedown on the ground in a small pool of blood and waves to the girls staring up at her. There is a scratch in her throat, a black hole. Corvus whispers, The future is right now.
There isn’t a chance in the world. Corvus wants a sense of peace, like touching something warm to get warmer, but the feeling doesn’t come, and they keep driving away. The sky clouds over in dark storms, the engine hums and vibrates. In the backseat, the pit bull sighs, resting his head on his legs. He is a dog with presence, with big lungs. Corvus
stares out the car window, experiencing a small sinew of longing, and turns silently to Amber. Some of her hair in the wind gets caught in her mouth.
There is blood on Amber’s face; the house in the rearview mirror is shrinking smaller and smaller out of sight. Little by little, they make a pact with knowing glances, sharing strange sorrow twisted in a secret with each other: they need to be gone. They need to get the fuck out of here.
The flowers on either side of the highway, all native to the region, are changing colors, from lavender to sunflower. The deer and elk sleep in the dark. Corvus wants a wolf or something else lonely to howl or scream but nothing answers. No wind outside the car.
Amber says, That’s funny.
Corvus asks, What?
My foot is asleep. Amber says, It’s tingling.
CHAPTER 3
EVEN WITH ALL THE ANGER THAT BUILDS, CORVUS HAS THIS small hope that she can survive anything, see everything through, endure and take on the days as they come. At ten years old Corvus already knows the world is a scary place. Full of sick, twisted people. She knows to cross the street when a strange figure appears ahead, keeping her hands in her pockets, never looking meek or afraid. She crosses dry streams and paved streets every day. Corvus watches the leaves on tree branches shake in the wind and avoids eye contact with everyone; her eyes gloss over people. She loves how wet things get in the fall, how the sky is reflected everywhere, watching planes fly through puddles, disappearing in the pavement.
On the walk home from school, on the other side of a chain-link fence, Corvus can see a man masturbating in a brick alleyway with another man watching. The other man is smoking something. They both wave at her and smile from far away. She can feel them waving and smiling at the corner of her eye as she treads uphill toward home. Inside her head, not paying attention to the road or the trees, Corvus likes that they both looked happy back there. She runs the last few blocks home, her book bag bouncing, her hood falling back.
Finding her keys in the threshold, she thinks about how she loves coming home, how coming home is one of her favorite things. Slamming a screen door feels like perfect. She hangs her jacket and finds her cigarettes, hidden inside her owl piggy bank, a pack of Newports and a pack of Reds. The sunlight fades from room to room, dust bunnies float along the ceiling beams, and Corvus watches shadows while making hot ramen on the stove.
She loves the house empty and to herself. Her father is always working or at the casino, her mother runs her secret errands and sometimes never comes back home at all, for nights on end. No questions, though. Her mother leaves no contact number to call but sometimes a twenty-dollar bill.
The wind hits the side of the house that leaks and rattles. Corvus cracks an egg and watches the yolk, golden in the broth, tilting her head back as she smokes. She mouths a sad pop song. Her prized possession is an alarm clock radio that she never turns off, and a broadcast is always playing somewhere in the house.
Corvus blows smoke into the spinning ceiling fan and calls her friend Michelle, who lives just down the street and around the corner. She bites her lip when Michelle appears on the front porch dressed in short shorts and a baseball cap. Michelle is two years older and already developing. Hugging each other near the vines, they share a cigarette before walking out back to the swimming pool; leaves float in clouds on the surface of the water, the last rays of light trace the edge of the pool.
The water laps. They dip their feet, sitting close and watching geese form flocks on the horizon. Corvus feels like dying a little.
Corvus says, Hi.
Michelle smiles and says, Hi.
Did you bring it?
Michelle nods and brings her bag around, unzipping it and showing Corvus an unlabeled videotape. It’s heavy when she holds it.
Corvus asks, From your dad’s again?
Michelle says, I watched it earlier. There are three guys in this one and the girl kind of looks like you.
Really?
Michelle nods and says, Really.
Corvus finishes the last of the cigarette and gets up to throw the stub away. She says, Goodbye, geese, and stares into the sun, no hand in her face.
Corvus hugs Michelle from behind. She says, Come on, no one’s home. Let’s go upstairs and watch it.
CHAPTER 4
AFTER HOURS OF DRIVING IN THE DARK, AS THOUGH OUT OF nowhere, there is a bright neon motel sign and a diner emerging from the hill. A wide smile on a hot dog painted on the side of a red brick building makes Corvus feel demented, realizing she aches for a shower and a warm place to lie down. Her eyes feel new and different as though she has just woken up. The dashboard clock glows blue in the dark: 3:22 a.m.
She can hear a helicopter and a single car, maybe highway patrol, pass by the motel parking lot and Corvus feels reassured by the quiet that follows. There’s still a faint smell of blood and wet dog in the car. Corvus watches the rain, illuminated under a nearby streetlamp, before she can make out Amber walking out of the manager’s office and opening her driver side door. Corvus blows on the cold window. She writes HELLO on the foggy glass and draws a happy face as the other door slams.
Amber says, Let’s go, I got us a room.
Corvus finds Amber in the reflection, not turning her head around, a little lost in thought. Completely still. Push and scream.
In the window, Amber says, HBO. HBO. She pumps her clenched fist.
They unlock the door and walk toward the bed like zombies, not bothering to turn on the lights. Corvus falls facedown on the comforter, her backpack falling to the floor, and Amber goes straight to the bathroom. Corvus nearly falls asleep before she hears the shower going, the sounds of steam and light water splashing; she can hear a soft wind from outside the cheap wallpapered walls. Although she has an urge to go check the blinds, she stays right where she is, sinking into the little give of the bedding. For Corvus, the bed is a small lake where she floats and keeps her face still, the only movements are from her chest as she breathes, from the rare long blinks she makes to the low ceiling.
Amber walks out of the bathroom in her robe, drying her hair with a towel, and puckers her lips. She is all clean, all smiles, and she looks good in this light, Corvus thinks. Steam climbs to the ceiling, the bathroom fan humming.
Corvus almost violently sits up, flailing in the bed, and says, Oh, fuck.
What? Amber asks. What?
Corvus quickly rises, her hair disheveled, and goes for the door. She says, We left the fucking dog in the car.
She opens the door and rain blows in, wet leaves all over the carpet.
Pink oleanders melt into the pink sky at dawn. Their limbs feel frail and smooth. The motel room seems bigger somehow and lush and vibrant. Corvus realizes this is the longest she has been sober in more than a year. She remembers eyeing Amber back at the house in the woods for the first time and seeing her friend Michelle in Amber’s eyebrows, in the way Amber leans in doorways, the way she laughs before nodding yes to things. Corvus sees herself at age twelve walking to Michelle’s house, watching Michelle laugh on her patio, walking with Michelle toward the deep woods, sometimes scared of the woods, sometimes feeling completely free.
Amber laughs and nods, and says, Yeah, I guess I do that.
The light hits her face and collarbone; she’s a known quantity.
Amber laughs with her whole body, leaning backwards and arching her back on her tiptoes if she finds something really funny and it has her completely.
Where is she now? Amber asks. Michelle? What happened to her?
Corvus says, She died a couple of years ago.
Amber sits on the floor, wrapped in her robe, and makes a nice lap for the dog, and says, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. She pats her lap and baby-talks to the dog. The big boy comes over, wagging his tail. She says, I love that dogs are better at reading body language than humans are. Human body language.
There is something distant and sorrowful in how little her head moves when she’s talking or listening to other people, C
orvus thinks, how her gaze stays fixed on various inanimate objects in the room. Eye contact can be this sweet torture. Corvus remembers Michelle doing the same thing: they would spend hours talking and staring at chandeliers and window blinds and not looking at each other. The air conditioner clicks on, hums, and, without placing why, Corvus feels compelled to be here.
Amber reaches for her bag, and her robe droops a little open. She starts rolling a spliff; the dog doesn’t move. He snorts and lies down in a heavy thud. She takes a drag and leans against the wall, close to the radiator, smoke circulating through her mouth and nostrils. She inhales and blows smoke rings.
Amber says, I miss you, baby.
What?
I heard you talking to yourself once, one night in the kitchen. It was the same night we went to the diner, remember?
Corvus asks, And that’s what I said?
Yeah. Yeah, that’s what you said.
Amber gets up to hand Corvus the spliff and offers her other hand. Do you want to talk about anything, Corvus? Did you hear what I said? Amber asks, Who were you talking about? Who were you missing?
Sitting at a desk, Corvus stares at a cheap painting of blue waves crashing against a lighthouse and holds a matchbook. She fidgets and turns it by its four corners like a square wheel. When Corvus finally looks back at her, Amber doesn’t dare say anything. It’s as though Corvus is still waiting for something else to happen, as though she is trying to summon something from outside her mind. A thought passes slowly from beneath one still eyeball to the other still eyeball, a cold chill. Amber almost expects a knock on the door.
King of Joy Page 3