Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  But she bit her tongue, didn’t say a word to Bette, because her boss was staring at her in such an odd way. Dori suddenly felt naked, as if Bette knew, as if she’d been recognized, either from the alley or from the 80s. She held her breath, waiting for Bette to call her by her real name, before realizing the woman was just buzzed. Not really focused on Dori at all. Not focused on anything. Bette shook her head and grinned.

  ‘What did I say?’ she reminded Dori with a stage-type wink. ‘You know, earlier, at the store.’

  Dori remembered, and hoped Bette wouldn’t repeat the statement. That Van was good for a snack, but she’d be hungry again later. If she were destined to be hungry in the way Bette meant, what would her brand new boss do about that? Did Bette have Gael in mind for her in some sort of elaborate set-up? Dori could easily imagine her very first orgy right over one of San Francisco’s famous hills.

  Van’s arm slid down her body, and she realized that he’d been kissing Mica during their break. Maybe X really did make you want to love everyone. But what man wouldn’t want to do both of the women seated in the back seat of the big old Mercedes?

  Immediately, Dori clarified that thought in her head. The Mercedes might have been old in 2008. But it was sparkling now. She remembered how Gael always had the newest gadgets – like the car phone. She remembered that from her youth, and then she remembered what Janie had said the night after their reunion, when she and her friends had been drinking at the bar that had once been Gael’s Creamery.

  He’d sold coke. He’d been busted …

  But when?

  She settled back against the leather seat, feeling the warmth of Van at her side, and when he offered her a pill, whispering to her how good she’d feel, she suddenly took it. ‘How long?’ she asked softly.

  ‘About a half hour,’ he told her, nuzzling against her once more. She thought back to a conversation she’d had with a hairdresser once. They’d both been on a photo shoot for one of the big fashion magazines, and Alain was describing the sensation of X, having taken the drug at a party the weekend before. ‘The high was amazing,’ he’d told her. He’d wanted to fuck not only his girlfriend but her best friend who was a Playmate.

  ‘Don’t you usually want to fuck her?’ a stylist had teased.

  ‘Yeah, sure. But this time, the girls wanted it, too.’ Alain had gone on to describe the amazing threesome they’d shared. A ménage to go down in history, he’d said.

  ‘Go down,’ the other hairdresser had teased. ‘Freudian slip?’

  Alain had shaken his head. ‘No slips at all. Just unbelievable pleasure.’

  Dori blinked as she remembered the story, and wondered what she’d gotten herself into. Or rather, how long it would truly be before the drugs took effect.

  On the radio, Rick Springfield’s ‘Jesse’s Girl’ gave way to a blast of heavy sound – The Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ – and Bette ratcheted up the volume. ‘Next time they come to town, we really have to get tickets. Who knows how long they’ll be around? I mean, those boys are going to be eligible for Social Security soon.’

  ‘No,’ Dori piped up. ‘They’ll be playing forever.’

  Bette didn’t agree. ‘Jagger swore he’d never sing ‘Satisfaction’ at fifty. He’s got to be getting close now. He’ll have to quit soon. I can’t imagine him on stage in those skin-tight clothes much longer. Same as Aerosmith. I’m so glad we got a chance to see them. Dinosaurs like that aren’t going to be around forever, you know it?’

  Dori started giggling. She never giggled. This was the X, wasn’t it? ‘Wanna bet?’ she asked, thinking of how hot Joe Perry had looked at the latest concert she’d attended, and how all the girls in the audience had nearly swooned when he’d taken off his shirt. At the sound of her laughter, Bette turned around in the seat again and gave her a funny look.

  ‘You OK?’

  Van blocked her with his body. ‘She’s fine, Bette. You concentrate on the directions. All right? Don’t worry about the three little monkeys back here.’

  How odd. He was young. So young. Twenty-four, maybe. But he seemed to be in charge. Why was he wasting his time as a delivery boy and record store clerk? Didn’t he have other aspirations? She tried to ask him, but nothing was making sense. Her words weren’t. Not slurred in a drunken way, but her thoughts were all over the place, bouncing from one concept to another too quickly for her to capture.

  As they pulled into a parking space in San Francisco, she finally felt at ease. Euphoric. This was the high she’d been waiting for, wasn’t it? This was the mood Van had been in when she’d entered the car. Blissful. Yet a part of her managed to stay removed. To watch, almost as if from above, as Bette linked arms with her and led her into the club.

  Who would have thought this place existed? From the outside, it was a bleak-looking warehouse. Inside, the lights flashed and the music throbbed. The beat was pure techno dance music that Dori had never been particularly fond of, but now she felt her body moving to the rhythm. She couldn’t help herself. The sounds flowed over her, through her, and when Bette started to dance with her, Dori felt as if she were flying.

  Bodies pressed all around her. Tight. Sweaty. But Dori didn’t care. The room spun with her. And she was free.

  ‘You’re feeling it, aren’t you?’ Van asked.

  He was right next to her. And when she looked at him, she saw the way he’d looked back when she was sixteen. All right, he looked the same. But she saw him through her own sixteen-year-old eyes, rather than the eyes of a jaded thirty-eight-year-old who had just broken up with the man she thought for sure she would marry. Now, when she gazed at Van, she could see the stud who lifted heavy boxes every day. The flirt who teased her, ‘Wait ‘til you’re legal, kid. The fun we’ll have.’ She’d waited, but by the time she was old enough, she was at college, and thoughts of fucking a delivery boy had been replaced by greater aspirations.

  Now, she had no greater aspirations.

  None other than fucking him.

  She slid into his arms and let herself enjoy the connection. He was hard, had been hard since the car. Maybe he was always hard. She danced against him, feeling as if the lights were part of her, feeling as if her heart was beating to a rhythm that the deejay controlled.

  When Van pulled her toward a corner of the room, she followed willingly, amazed, even in her state, to realize that she was graceful, that she could dance her way through the throbbing mass of bodies. She’d been at a Grateful Dead concert once, and had failed in this same attempt. People had been dancing all around her, and Dori hadn’t been able to blend. Instead, she’d gotten stuck at every intersection, playing chicken, not sure which way to go to pass. Trying left, trying right, and ultimately standing totally still and letting the Deadheads swirl on their way around her.

  Now she wasn’t fighting the bodies – she was one of them.

  She thought of the reunion – a million years and three nights ago. Thought about all of the square-looking dancers, mid-life crises in motion, trying to recapture the emotions of their high school days. Trying to make peace with the differences between who they had wanted to be when they were eighteen and who they’d ended up as now.

  Chelsea hadn’t made peace, had she? That’s why she’d gotten the extensions so that her hair was the same style it had been twenty years before. Why she’d Botoxed herself into expression oblivion, had bleached her teeth that unnatural shade of Weatherman White, spent hours under the sunlamp until her skin had that lizardy texture of a well-worn suitcase. Hell, she’d even talked about having what little excess fat that had clung to her thighs removed and injected into her face.

  How crazy, Dori thought, considering all of the people who wished for their youth back now, when in high school all they’d wanted was to get out. Get older. If she could have returned to her high school days and told herself something, anything, what would she have said? There was a Gloria Steinem quote she had taped on her bathroom wall – she’d had it forever: ‘I wish our future selves c
ould meet our past selves and say, “It’s OK. Do what you want to do. That’s the important thing.”’

  This was different. Being here at the Rave. Even if she happened to be older than most of the people around her, the energy was different from the reunion. This wasn’t a group of people trying like mad to have a good time. The forced gaiety in the gym had been the worst part, aside from the fact that Rowan had stood her up. When she looked around the warehouse, she saw that the dancers here really were having a good time.

  She could tell because she was one of them.

  Van led her by the hand to a distant corner, pushed her up against the wall. She closed her eyes as he kissed her, and she felt herself spinning. This was amazing. Sublime. The music, and the heat, and the lights. His body pressed against hers, and she opened her eyes quickly. He was lifting her skirt. She stared around, seeing swirls of crimson followed by gold streaks. She blinked quickly. Silver seemed to flash through the air.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she told him. She was surprised to hear her voice.

  He pressed his mouth to her ear. ‘I want you, Emma.’

  It took her a minute to realize who he was talking to. Even as his body pressed to hers. Even as he guided her hand to his cock and let her feel how ready he was. Emma. Who was Emma? Oh, that’s right. She was Emma.

  ‘Do you want me?’ he asked.

  She nodded, groping down to hold onto his cock, to work her hand up and down. Was this wrong? Not that they were going to fuck, but that they were going to do so here? In the middle of a Rave? She looked around, and saw other couples equally engaged nearby. Perhaps fucking went naturally at Raves.

  Van was working something out of his waistband. She saw the foil square dance in his hand, saw him slip the condom on before she helped to slip her panties aside and guide him inside her.

  Was she doing this for real? She sucked in her breath as he held her in his arms, already feeling the pleasure begin to build within her. The way Van touched her added to the euphoria she’d been feeling from the X. His hands made all of her nerve endings come to life. Even when he simply stroked one hand along her arm, she shivered with delight. So when he brought a hand between their bodies, just lightly touching her clit, she thought she was going to scream.

  But a tiny part of her brain continued to run commentary. Was this actually Dori? Fucking a semi-stranger at a party was much more of a Violet move than something she’d ever consider. But what was the problem? She and Van had already fucked once, hadn’t they? Still, Dori knew herself. She never would have slept with him in his van if she’d thought she’d actually see him again. Never have fucked the young record store clerk if she hadn’t convinced herself, even momentarily, that she was lost in a dream.

  But now she was lost in a new way. Now, she was lost in a Rave.

  And if this was lost, she never wanted to be found.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked again, pressed so firmly against her. God, if he kept working her like that, one hand pressed between their bodies so that he could continue to stroke her clit to the beat of the music, the other moving casually over her breasts, then down her side, stroking her, soothing her … if he kept up the motions, she would come. And then she would dissolve into all of the colors that swirled steadily around her. Not only the electric lights, but lights that only she could see.

  She felt herself smiling, and wondered if she looked as blissed-out as she felt.

  Mica found them moments later, connected, sweaty and still fucking in the corner. The woman didn’t say a word. Instead, she came close to Dori and started to kiss her. Dori opened her eyes, sensing a difference. This wasn’t Van kissing her. The lips were softer, cooler. This was a woman. She looked into Mica’s eyes, saw her own lust reflected there, and then shut her eyes once more. She felt as if she were in a rainbow, her body composed of bands of bright colors. She felt as if she were the music as the beat entered her bloodstream and began circulating through her.

  Mica smelled so good. Musky and real, an earthy perfume that Dori didn’t immediately recognize, and then she breathed it in deep and remembered in a flash. Obsession. Nobody wore that fragrance any more. None of her friends, anyway. They’d all moved on, most of them commissioning their own personal scents from perfumeries in Paris. But the 80s had been different, all about those heady overpowering scents – Poison. Giorgio. She loved Obsession, and she leaned as far as she could toward Mica, to drink the woman in.

  Oh, the sensations. She had flashes of total understanding. She’d always wanted this. Why had she shied away in school? Why had she always needed to be good, to stay pure? She didn’t know. But she’d missed out. And she wasn’t going to miss out any longer, that was for sure.

  Rowan watched. From a distance, he watched.

  Was this really Dori? Was this really the girl he’d thought he would marry once upon a time? She’d changed over the years, that was for sure. Not just the way she looked, because he had to admit that she was prettier now than she’d been as a kid. Different, yes, but beautiful instead of simply sweet. Her hair was much longer than the last time he’d seen her, and the front was streaked through with silver. Her body was intense, hard and lean, and those legs he’d spent hours fantasizing about, wanting to feel wrapped around his waist …

  But he wasn’t simply mesmerized by the way she looked. It was the way she acted. He’d tried so many different times to get her to go all the way with him – not even sure how he’d feel if she said ‘yes.’ Just pressing her because it was what boys did. Tried to go for it. Tried to get the girl to agree. Never having to actually worry about what a ‘yes’ would mean, because Dori wasn’t the type of girl to say ‘yes.’

  He’d followed her career for years, seeing her name in the magazines, making sure that he kept in touch with at least one of her friends. Because he’d been planning all along. He’d been waiting until he could make his fantasy a reality.

  What he hadn’t planned on was her reaction to the situation. He’d never taken her thoughts into consideration. Why not? Because he’d been so sure of himself. Christ, he believed in science, in the numbers, in the facts. The problems always arose when you added humans to the mix, with their messy emotions and their fucked-up needs and crazy cravings.

  He watched Dori, watched her destroy yet one more of his careful plans.

  That was okay. He’d find a way. He’d waited this long, hadn’t he?

  He could bide his time a little bit longer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dori didn’t remember how she got home. Everything after the club was a blank. When she looked around, she realized that was a misstatement. She hadn’t gotten home. This wasn’t her home in 08 or 88.

  So where the fuck was she?

  She heard a high-pitched noise, and she squinted at the sound. Someone was talking to her. ‘Polly want a blow job?’

  She turned her head and saw Bette’s parrot, neon-green head and dark emerald feathers, staring at her from a cage hanging by the window. ‘Pretty Polly. Pretty Polly. Polly want a blow job?’

  God, only Bette would have taught her parrot to say something filthy like that. But Dori was grateful the noise was coming from a bird and not a human.

  She blinked hard and looked around, and her head seemed to scream once more. The paint on the walls was scarlet. The color of the inside of a rose, she thought. No, not quite a flower. This was the color of Bette’s favorite nail polish – Voluptuous Vixen – and that voluptuous vixen herself, Bette, was in the bed next to her, crashed out hard with her face pressed deep into one of her silver satin pillows.

  Quietly, Dori sat up in the bed. She knew the apartment well. She’d made extra cash in high school cleaning up for Bette twice a month. She remembered carting out liquor bottles, emptying ashtrays filled with kiss-imprinted cigarette butts. Once, she had found Bette’s vibrator tucked into the bottom groove of the frame when she’d made the bed, and she’d been mortified.

  What to do?

&n
bsp; Put the toy somewhere where Bette would find it and realize Dori had seen it? Ultimately, she’d let the thing roll to the base of the bed, where Bette might think the vibrator had wound up all by itself.

  Now, she pushed off the black-and-white zebra-striped sheets and walked slowly to the bright pink bathroom. Colors, which had been her friends the night before, now hurt her. She wished Bette had an all-white bathroom rather than this fuchsia-and-black monstrosity. She splashed water on her face, then went to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. She was only half-surprised to see Mica and Van asleep on the leather couch, curled up together like puppies. Mica was fully dressed in the sleek indigo tank-dress she’d had on the night before, but the hem was up past her hip, and Dori could see that the woman was naked underneath the silk. Van’s shirt was off. Even fast asleep, he maintained his rock-god good looks. Dori remembered in a flash what they’d done the night before, and she felt her cheeks coloring, imagining the hue as bright pink as the walls in Bette’s bathroom.

  She filled a glass with tap water, remembering that this was life before the bottled water phase. Glass in hand, she went outside, onto Bette’s tiny patio. It was late. The sun was high. Weren’t they all supposed to be at work? She drank her water and watched a hummingbird hover over Bette’s wispy purple flowers. She was still standing outside when she heard a burst of obscenities from within the apartment.

  ‘Oh, my fucking god. It’s after ten! How the fucking fuck did that happen?’

  She turned to look through the sliding glass doors to see Bette, frantic, trying to dress herself. Or undress herself, Dori wasn’t entirely sure. She watched as Bette rushed around the bedroom, flinging colorful items of clothing in all directions, and then she saw her trip and fall over something on the far side of the bed. Dori walked down the patio to peek and then stepped inside the room to see.