by Kate Myles
Doug jogs over. “Hey! I like it,” he says. “Very mysterious.”
She says nothing. She remains still and fills with intention. Dance, it’s not all about movement. She lets her casual stance transform into a pantomime of informality. The outline of her arm cuts a form in the air. She takes the shopping bag from his hand and slides it to her elbow in slow motion. She lets her other hand rest an inch off her hip, just like the mannequin in the Athleta window.
“Oh, right,” Doug says. “You’re performing. Carry on.” He backs up. She opens the shopping bag. It’s a disappointment, the cold-brew coffee machine inside it. Doug is supposed to be here for her alone. No multitasking.
She raises an index finger and improvises an aimless turn away from Doug. He’s still looking. She can feel his eyes on her back. She reaches for the strap on her tank top and flicks it off her shoulder.
There’s laughter near the entrance to the movie theater. Shoppers are gathering. Probably around Howie. He’s a crowd-pleaser no matter how many times they tell him to lower his profile. The people near Chloe drift toward the commotion. Doug wanders with them.
Stay, she wants to call out. Watch me.
Whatever hammy thing Howie is doing is getting applause. She walks over and sees him in the fountain, trying on clothes. He puts an oxford shirt on backward. People laugh. They’ll laugh at anything.
“Oh my God, what is he doing?” says a girl. She’s the same age as Chloe, with flat-ironed hair and a pastel cardigan. Her boyfriend is holding a Victoria’s Secret bag.
“Dude!” says the boyfriend.
“Dude!” shouts Chloe. She feels the boyfriend notice her, a quick glance at first and then a longer one.
Howie lets an extra-large pair of pants fall around his ankles like some clown from a hundred years ago. The crowd keeps laughing, and Chloe joins in, reflecting back the cadence of the surrounding voices. She lets her laugh morph into a mechanical bark.
“Guffaw!” she crows. “Caw!” She slaps her knee and doubles over.
The girl starts looking at her. “What is this?”
“What is this!” Chloe imitates in a high-pitched whine.
The girl looks up at her boyfriend. “Is she serious?”
Doug’s face appears over the boyfriend’s shoulder. She locks eyes with him as she nestles close to the guy. “This is so tawdry,” she whispers and lifts her mouth to the boyfriend’s. She feels the guy react, respond, for just a second.
“What the hell?” says the girlfriend. The guy steps back from Chloe and raises his hands like he’s under arrest. The girl yells, “Did she just kiss you?”
It’s obscene then, the glee. It starts out like a private joke between Chloe and herself until it bubbles and pops and forces her face into the wickedest smile. The girlfriend yanks her boyfriend toward her. Doug is still watching. Chloe covers her bare teeth with her hand as the boyfriend says, “This is fucked up,” and leads his girl away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DOUG
The bar is dark and smells like beer and fresh-cut citrus. All the stools are occupied by the scruffy and postcollegiate. Doug hands out gin and tonics to Chloe and her castmates, Sheralyn and Dylan, standing near the service area.
“You guys were great,” Doug says. He hands Dylan a glass. “I thought I was going to see a bunch of mimes.”
A stool opens up next to where they’re standing. Doug motions for Chloe to sit.
“I’m okay,” she says.
“Chloe, sit,” says Dylan. He maneuvers to the other side of her as Chloe sits and swells between the two men. She leans back against the bar. Doug runs his eyes down the length of her arched torso, sheathed in scratchy-looking spandex. She needs new clothes. He hasn’t decided yet if he’s going to sleep with her. If he does, he’ll take her shopping.
He notices Sheralyn next to him, breathing in sharp, like she’s taking a sip of air. She has that short-banged, alternative look that comes back in style every few years. Her arms are tattooed in various permutations of red hearts and Rosie the Riveter. Probably into kink, he thinks. He leans over to her. “I’ll save you the next one.” Sheralyn flashes him an edgy pout.
Chloe props an elbow on the bar. “My favorite thing we did—do you remember this, Dylan? We formed a line in front of a store to see if we could get anyone to stand with us. We couldn’t make it too straight, or else they’d walk right by. Did you know when people line up, they naturally stagger?” She lets her face fall into something beatific. “It’s amazing, the way people arrange themselves.”
Doug puts a hand on the bar behind her and lowers his voice. “I wasn’t expecting you to be this deep.”
“I know,” says Chloe. “It’s like a parlor trick. I say something halfway interesting, and people are like, It thinks!”
Two girls with facial piercings move in from the periphery. One of them whispers in Sheralyn’s ear.
“But what you were saying before,” Dylan says. “About mimes. Mimes are an idiom. You already know what to expect. We start with a blank slate each time. We don’t force anything.”
“Except for Howie,” says Sheralyn.
“Was that the guy in the fountain?” says Doug. “He was funny.”
Dylan and Chloe trade a glance in the silent language of the young and judgmental. No one speaks for a moment.
“Doug’s my boss,” Chloe says. Doug becomes aware of a sensation, as unfamiliar to him as it is unpleasant. He feels uncool.
“Love it,” says Dylan.
Little prick. Doug stands straighter and scrolls through a mental set list of jostling, dominating questions. How much do you make? What kind of car do you drive? Are you fucking Chloe? Because if you are, you’re going to stop.
“You know anything about market research?” Doug finally asks.
“Me?” asks Dylan.
“Beyond the Brand, that’s my company,” says Doug. “We were voted one of the top ten innovative firms by Adweek.”
Dylan lowers his head and wriggles his bottom lip. He looks like he has a wad of chewing tobacco in there. Doug opens his phone and finds the picture of his latest EEG prototype, a thin black band with just two wire sensors.
“I’m bringing a new wearable to the market, a portable EEG.”
Dylan takes his phone and raises his eyebrows. “This goes on your head?”
Doug continues, talking up his project like he always does, projecting confidence that it will actually turn into something. “People are going to be able to measure their brain waves, monitor their stress levels as they go about their day, as they shop. And that’s going to give me a whole hell of a lot of data.”
Dylan swishes his lips. He’s definitely chewing something. Nicotine gum, maybe. He parks it on the upper right side of his mouth. “Do you know how the tech works?” he asks.
Doug chuckles. “You mean the zeros-and-ones part? No. You don’t have to be a geek anymore to work in this stuff.”
“Hey!” shouts Chloe. She waves Howie over from the entrance. He squeezes a path to them. “Where were you?”
“His agent was here,” says Sheralyn.
“You’re not going to introduce us?” asks Dylan.
“She couldn’t stay,” says Howie. Dylan watches the entrance for a few seconds.
“Doug’s wife is an agent,” says Chloe.
“We know,” says Sheralyn. “Doug, you’re famous around here.”
“Famous? What have you been saying about me, Chloe?”
“You’re all she talks about,” says Sheralyn. The pierced girls trade nasty smirks.
Chloe smiles up at him. She seems unaware she’s in the presence of people who hate her. These kids’ lives are so populated. He’s almost forgotten the crisscrossing social circles of his twenties. All the time spent with people he couldn’t stand. He checks his watch. He’ll stay for another ten minutes.
“I don’t talk about you that much,” Chloe says.
“Doug has a plan to monitor our brains,”
Dylan says to Howie.
“Not you individually,” says Chloe. She sits up. “It’s like data on everyone, all together. It’s really cool. Like, when people are at a store, their Bluetooth and GPS will let the app know if they’re in front of the milk or orange juice or whatever. And the EEG will be measuring their brain waves at the same time. And when you put all that information together, Doug will be able to tell if people like a particular brand of orange juice or if they’re just so-so about it.”
Doug beams at her. This is just her day job. She doesn’t have to care about what he does. He touches the small of her back.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he says. Chloe blinks and looks down.
“Can I opt out?” asks Sheralyn. Her voice is husky and confrontational. She lifts her chin in a gesture of defiance.
“Why would you want to?” He matches Sheralyn’s hard stare, generating a crackle of heat. Sex is everywhere.
Chloe slips her fingers over his hand on her back. He returns his attention to her. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispers.
Chloe’s car is junky and dirty. Her face in the driver’s side window is a lesson in juxtaposition: fresh and beautiful versus apparent inability to qualify for an auto loan.
He drives behind her, following her up through the winding eucalyptus groves and cliffside homes of Laurel Canyon and down the other side of the mountain. The boulevard widens as they reach the Valley, as if to accommodate the flat sun glare and pale stucco apartment blocks. Chloe speeds through a yellow light. She pulls over to wait for him across the intersection. She does it again a few blocks later. Doug taps his fingers on the steering wheel at each red light, wishing he knew Chloe better so he could call her and tell her to start using her brains.
He calls his wife instead. She doesn’t answer. He leaves a voice mail, reminding her he has a client dinner tonight. But his voice is too smooth and natural. He only speaks like that when he has something to hide. Emily always knows. She has a tell. A tiny expiration of breath. A flicker of a pause before she changes the subject. Doug sees signs for the 101 and thinks of taking it home to her.
Emily had her first OB appointment that morning. She didn’t know they’d be doing an ultrasound. She FaceTimed him and held the phone up to the screen so he could see the squirming black-and-white outline of their baby.
“Wow. Wow,” was all he could say as he sat at his desk. He put his hand on his screen and held it there, pretending he was touching his wife’s belly. “Turn the camera so I can see your face.”
“No,” she said. He could tell she was tearing up. “I need to figure out how to process this.”
“Ah yes, my lovely and emotionally stunted wife.”
Her laugh was throaty. Emily, Doug thinks. He has an urge to call her again. Maybe she’ll pick up.
Chloe stops at the next red light and sticks her head out the window with a cheery thumbs-up. He flicks his finger against his forehead in salute. He should go home. He rests his hand on the blinker, almost signaling left, the direction of the freeway. He’ll pick up a bottle of champagne on the way.
But then he remembers that Emily won’t be able to help him drink it. She might not even be up for sex after such a big day. The light turns green, and his car edges forward, straight, like a horse on a well-worn trail ride following the beast in front. A block later, Doug isn’t thinking about Emily at all.
Chloe scoots ahead of him into her apartment. She picks up throw pillows and sweeps something terry cloth underneath a blue futon. Everything else in the apartment—the carpet, the walls, the vertical blinds—is uniformly off-white.
She disappears into the galley kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” she calls.
“No,” Doug says. He follows her.
“No?” She turns to him.
He keeps walking. “No, I don’t want anything to drink.” He smashes his body into hers, pushing her up against the counter. She lets out a cry of surprise and moves a resistant hand to his chest. He pulls his head back. “Are we doing this?” he asks. He wonders if Chloe is planning to waste his time.
“Yeah,” she says. “I just—you move kind of fast.”
Doug stifles an eye roll. He could be home with his wife right now. But he has to suppress his impatience. These girls are so easily offended.
“Sorry. You just drive me crazy, seeing you every day,” he says. He lowers his face to her shoulder and slowly moves his lips to her ear. He feels her start to melt, just a little. “Sometimes, you’re all I think about.” He exhales onto her neck. “You’re so fucking beautiful.” She tilts her head back and gives a soft, appreciative moan.
The front door opens. Doug lifts his head and looks at Chloe. He hears the sound of someone padding along the carpet to the edge of the kitchen.
“Oh my God,” says a familiar raspy voice.
“Who is that?” he whispers.
“Sheralyn,” she mouths, never taking her eyes off him. “She’s my roommate.”
Doug coughs but doesn’t turn around. “Hi, Sheralyn,” he says.
“Hey.”
Sheralyn shuts herself up in a room off the small hallway, which is a shame. He’d love an audience for this. Chloe is one of the prettiest girls he’s been with. The urge to show her off intermingles with his desire for sex. He undoes the drawstring on Chloe’s pants, angling his movements out to some invisible witness like they’re a couple of porn stars in a montage of skin and curves and burning points of contact.
“Jesus, you’re fucking hot.”
“Shhh,” Chloe whispers. “She’ll hear you.”
“So?”
They smirk and bring their faces to each other. Two rascals making mischief. It’s what she wants. She’s a total exhibitionist. He knows this instinctually. That’s his skill. Figuring women out. It’s what makes him a good lover.
They move to her bedroom. He undresses her. She has a scar across her thigh. It’s long and raised and pink. He starts to ask her about it, but then he’s struck by a sense of repulsion. He doesn’t actually want to know where it came from. He listens for her roommate.
“Do you think Sheralyn wants to join?” he asks.
Chloe lifts her head and peers at him over the length of her torso. “That might be weird,” she says.
“What, you never had a threesome?” He keeps his tone nonchalant, a trick he picked up long ago, from his buddies in college. A girl will do anything as long as you make it seem like no big deal.
“Of course,” she says. “But Sheralyn and I aren’t really—”
Doug moves up next to her and kisses her before she can finish her sentence. The whole time they have sex, he imagines Sheralyn with her ear to the door, listening.
He lies next to Chloe afterward and runs his fingers down the length of her bicep. Her goose bumps transfer to the surface of his own skin.
“You’re electric,” he says.
“That’s what I feel like!” she says. “I can barely stand it.”
He hears Sheralyn moving in the kitchen. An unexpected shame begins to stir underneath his exhaustion.
“I just wish everyone would stop trying to make me feel bad about it,” Chloe says.
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Men are okay for the most part.” Chloe blinks up at the ceiling. He has no idea what she’s talking about. She jolts up to a sitting position. Energized. “Like at the office. Jo-Ann is nice. But all these women have problems with me for no reason.”
Doug slides a hand up her thigh. “So what,” he says. “You want me to fire all the meanies?”
“That’s what it is! They’re mean, but they can’t be open about it. I know they talk about me behind my back.”
“Whoa,” Doug says. He shakes his head. “Chloe, do you know what de facto discrimination is?” Her face is blank. “I can’t show any favoritism at the office, especially now that we’ve slept together.”
She opens her mouth wide. “Oh no! I wasn’t asking f
or that. I just wish I had more woman friends.”
Doug breathes out and studies her. He considers whether it’s worth saying anything. This situation between them isn’t going to last long, he can tell. But she’s young. A little lost. He sits across from her on the bed and pushes the hair from her face with two hands. “Listen. You’re very pretty, obviously. Actually, you’re more than that. You’re probably disturbing to some people.”
Chloe shifts her weight. Settling in. Hungry and attentive.
Doug continues. “For most folk, life is about coming to terms with their limitations. I’m sure some women, they find a niche, right? They get what they can and convince themselves it was what they wanted all along. But then you come along, and you’re an absolute. You are what beauty is. You’re like a walking reminder of inequality.”
Chloe lowers her face and pinches a fold in her sheet. “I can’t say anything like that, though. They’d tear me to pieces.”
“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. You’re what everyone wants to be. Jesus, you’re what I want to be. Use it. Make them look up to you.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know how to do that.”
He’s ready to launch into his standard advice to young people. That your life is a story you tell yourself. That you can make it whatever you want. But then he glances around her room. At the water spots on her cheap throw rug and the clothes spilling from the milk crates lining the opposite wall. Her closet has no door, just a giant tapestry falling to about six inches above the floor. Underneath is a clutter of cardboard and procrastination.
He gestures to her closet. “Well, you could start by getting your shit together. No offense.”
“I didn’t know you were coming over.”
It’s deeper than that. She thinks it’s okay not to own a dresser. “How old are you again?”
“Almost twenty-five.”
Almost young enough to make the way she’s living excusable. What do these kids call it? Adulting? But there’s a lack of self-respect in this room. She moves her face in front of his. He avoids her eyes.