Random (Going the Distance) (5 page)

“Not planning on it.”

He gathers it in his hands and twists it, then drops it and scoots closer behind me, and kisses my shoulder by the strap of my dress. It’s a gentle kiss, and he trails upward, pushing my hair aside as he kisses his way to my ear. A little shiver runs along my spine, and he feels it and murmurs against my ear, bringing his hands up to the straps and sliding them down my arms, his mouth making hot stops along my skin. Easy, easy, he slides the dress down until my breasts are bare, and he brings his hands around to cup them, brushing his thumbs over the tips. It makes me squirm a little and he pulls me closer, pressing himself against me.

“Okay?” he asks. 

“Yeah.” I lean back into him, putting my hands in his thick, cool hair. He slides me sideways and sucks lightly on my nipples, which sends electric sensations all through me. I could lie there and have him do that for seven years. I don’t know that it’s his favorite thing, but he knows I love it, and he stays there a while, making me hot and wet, and then he takes my dress all the way off of me and leaps up to shed his clothes. He lies down on top of me, skin to skin, and we kiss, and then he’s between my legs and inside of me and I make a noise. I love this part, too, the filling up, that hard first thrust, and the way it feels when he moves inside me.

Then he’s coming, and I have to hurry. I clench all my muscles and get a tiny orgasm in before he’s done, and he falls on me, groaning in happiness. I feel a little better, too, and think I can probably have a good time tonight. For once I don’t have to get up in the morning.

* * *

It’s not so bad at the club at first. My friend Lucy, the lead singer’s girlfriend, is there, wearing a gauzy blouse that shows off her tan. She’s the kind of beautiful that you can’t stop looking at, with tilted eyes and full lips. I think movie stars must look like this in person. I seriously don’t know how Jake got her. He’s surly and headed toward being an alcoholic and not even that good-looking.

He
is
the lead singer, and I guess that’s it. Girls always want to give him blow jobs, which has gone to his…uh…head.

She hugs me hard. “I heard all about it! Were you totally freaked?” Taking me by the hands, she leads me to a table where a drink is waiting, a rum and Coke. “I already got you a drink.”

“It was crazy,” I say, taking a big gulp. The liquor hits my neck muscles, loosening them up. Rick and I stopped on the way and had some hamburgers and fries, so I should be okay if I go slow. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Like the sound of the glass breaking is still in my ears.”

Her big violet eyes never leave my face. She’s a little older, maybe twenty-two, and always seems much wiser. We’ve been friends for two years, since Rick and I got together at a party where the band was playing. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me, that this older guy, who was so gorgeous every girl in the place wanted to talk to him, came up to
me.
Lucy was there, too, home from college for the summer and just starting to date Jake. He’s the brains and the voice behind the band. Rick is the beauty. He says this with a grin, but it’s true.

I tell Lucy about the job and Virginia, feeling again the squeeze in my belly. I should have gone to see her in the hospital already. Why haven’t I?

“Sweetie, stop.” Lucy squeezes my hand. “Virginia’s going to be fine. You’ve had a rough day. Now just let go and forget about it for tonight.”

I nod. It’s good advice. What can I really do tonight?

We dance. We drink. The band is not that great, honestly. Jake is good, with a gravelly voice that’s sexy and raw, but Rick is only decent on guitar, and the bass player covers for him. I have a good ear, tuned by my mom and step-dad, who played music all the time—every kind of music you can think of, though not too much country. Sometimes she’d give me little quizzes in the car: “Who’s this, Jessie?” my mom would say, turning up the radio. I’d answer,
The Beatles
or
Billie Holiday
or
Guns N’ Roses.
If it wasn’t for Jake’s voice, they wouldn’t have a band.

But they’re good enough for dancing, for losing yourself. By the end of the first set I’m sweating and happy. The rum and Coke has loosened me up, helped me forget the bad day and the fact that I have no job. When Rick comes over to sit with us, I give him a kiss. “Great job.”

“You look hot tonight,” he says, running his hand up my back. In my ear, he says, “Watching you on the dance floor gave me a hard-on.”

I laugh, but it’s kind of thrilling. I love to imagine him looking at my body as I dance.

“Enough, you two.” Jake sits down and gulps a beer. Sweat dots his forehead. “A friend of mine said she saw you at the Musical Spoon this afternoon, Jess. You trying to read poetry or sing folk songs?”

I give him a half grin. “No. And no way. I applied for a job. One of their cooks was at Billy’s this morning—” Just this morning? “—told me they were looking for servers.”

He grunts, his eyes glittery hard. That’s the thing about Jake—he’s smart and cold, and you’re wise not to forget it. I’m always wary with him. I can see something sharp in his eyes. A few times, when he’s wound up or drinking a lot or maybe had something stronger, he’s attacked me out of the blue.

“You know they turned us down, right?” he says.

“You don’t really play the kind of music they like.” I say it calmly, add a shrug.

“It wouldn’t have hurt them to give us a shot. I told them we could go acoustic.”

I take a sip of my second drink, remembering to go easy this time. “Not sure what to say to that.”

“Don’t work there.”

“Right.” I roll my eyes. “Like I can afford to turn down
any
job.”

“He’s right, babe,” Rick says, his hand on my thigh. “That would look bad for us.”

“I don’t see how, but it doesn’t matter. I need a job.”

“Oh, really!” Jake finishes his beer in two seconds, slams the glass back down on the table. “Would you work in strip joint, then?”

I glare at him. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Or maybe we could just get you a job with an escort service and you could turn tricks.”

Lucy says, “Jake,” and settles her hand on his forearm.

He shakes off her hand. “Don’t try to soothe me. Get me another beer.”

“Maybe when you’re in this mood it’s better not to drink.”

He swings around. “Get me a
fucking
beer.”

She sends me an apologetic glance and stands.

Leaving his full attention on me. “Well, would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Take a job as an escort.”

I roll my eyes and give Rick a look that says,
Hey, jump in any time, dude.

Jake warms to his subject, and as he speaks I can see he’s spoiling for a fight. “If you’d have sex for money, why don’t I just give you some right now and you can come in the bathroom and give me a blow job.”

In the split second it takes for me to really hear what he’s just said, Rick has sprung to his feet and swung a fist past me, a fist that lands right in Jake’s face. Jake punches back, and I duck, trying to get out of the way, but his fist clocks my ear so hard it knocks out my hearing. I try to get out of my chair and out of the way, but now they’re reaching for each other and my hair is in my face so I can’t maneuver. Something spills all over my jeans. Rick is shouting and Jake is swearing, and I take another punch to the face.

It sends me flying sideways, right into a pile of people and chairs at the next table. I feel hands around me, bracing me and I think they’re helping me until I feel a hand on my breast, another on my ass. There’s a roar in my ears, and I push at the hands, dragging one away, but then another grabs me harder. I fling my elbow as hard as I can into the body behind me, then struggle to my feet. A guy, football player type, stupid forehead, reaches for me again and I don’t even hesitate. I kick him hard. Not quite the balls but close enough to count.

Rick and Jake are still at it, thudding fists and grunting. There’s blood.

My face is throbbing. My left ear is deaf. My right breast has been mauled, and there’s beer all over my good jeans. Rick and Jack are locked in a wrestling hold, neither able to do anything, and the bouncer comes up. “All right, break it up.”

The manager is right behind him. “You assholes! You’re fucking fired. Get out of here.”

Rick flings his hair out of his face and gives me the evil eye, like this is somehow my fault. He shakes his head, wipes his mouth and walks away.

For one long second I stand there, watching him go. Jake spits on the floor by my foot. “Cunt,” he says. “See what you’ve done?”

Everything in my body buzzes, from the top of my scalp to my toes. Looking at the broken glass and the turned-over table, tasting blood in my mouth, I think
Is this the life I want?

The answer is easy. I walk out.

* * *

I stand outside for a few minutes, trying to calm my brain long enough to figure out what to do.

Mom! What
would you do?

It’s stupid that I talk to her still. She’s been gone almost five years, but it helps. Even if it’s my imagination, even if it’s not really her voice I hear but just my own head helping me out, it works.

Her answers are usually really simple. Same this time.
Go home,
she says.

It’s a pretty good walk, maybe a couple miles or a little more, but I’ve walked farther when the guys in the band got too rowdy or drunk. Henry used to make sure I had cab fare, but I’m not about to spend any of my last cash on that when I have two perfectly good feet.

I walk through a mostly residential neighborhood, looking weird, I’m sure, to the kids out in their yards playing ball. Light still hangs on the western horizon, a bright yellow line following the jagged edge of the mountains, and streetlights have started coming on. It surprises me. In the club, dancing and drinking, it felt much later. It’s probably not even ten o’clock yet.

At first my brain is full of noise, the fight, the insults, the grabby hands—I’m so sick of guys who think they can do whatever they want to girls!—the look on Rick’s face, which made me furious. How could he blame me for his stupid fight with his bastard of a friend? I didn’t deserve any of it. Not the name-calling, the blows, the groping, that mean, mad look from my
boyfriend.

I think of another pair of eyes, looking at me as if I were daybreak or lost treasure, eyes looking directly, deeply into mine as if I might know the secret to living forever or the mysteries of the universe.

After ten or fifteen minutes the cool air and the quiet of the streets start to make me feel better. The houses around here are little cracker boxes—a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, all arranged in a square. They have picture windows, and some have left their curtains open. I look in without shame, seeing cluttered tables and televisions and pictures on the walls. People. Families.

Into that quiet comes something else. A real question, maybe in my mom’s voice.
What kind of life do you want?

And I really don’t have any idea. I only know it’s not this one. I’m sick of bars and noise at night. I’m sick of drinking, which I don’t love that much.

I’m sick of Rick, too.

It gives me a hollow feeling in my gut, but I’ve known it for a while. I don’t feel anything for him most of the time. If I do feel something, it’s that slight disgust I felt this afternoon.

I don’t love him anymore.

It makes me start to cry, and that breaks the dam. I cry all the rest of the way home. It doesn’t matter, because it’s dark outside and I’m not howling out loud or anything, but tears stream down my face and drip on my chest, and when I reach down to brush them away, I realize that somehow my favorite shirt is torn across the side.

In that minute I’m done. I don’t know what my new life will look like, but this chapter is at an end.

Chapter SIX

I
n my dream, I’m sitting at the table in my kitchen when my mom walks in. Her hair is loose on her shoulders, shining in the morning sun. She goes to the sink to put water in the tea kettle like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“You’re alive!” I say, and leap out of my chair to give her a hug. She’s solid and strong, like always, and her arms lock me close. I feel her kiss my hair.

“I came to see you,” she says. “Are you okay?”

I think about telling her all the things that have gone wrong, but I don’t know where to start and it feels so good to hug her. “How long do you get to stay?”

“I’ll make you breakfast, how’s that?” She pulls back and looks at me, and her eyes are a much better blue than mine. They remind me of somebody, and I can’t remember who.

She clatters around my kitchen, which miraculously has everything she needs—eggs and a waffle maker and bacon and milk. “I think you need to find your dad,” she says.

“I have a dad,” I say. “Henry. You always tell me that.”

“Your other dad.”

I just look at her, unsure what to think.

“You’re lonely.” She glances at me. “Aren’t you?”

I don’t have to nod. In these dreams she always knows everything.

Then breakfast magically appears in front of me, golden waffles smelling of vanilla, and a scrambled egg and three strips of meaty bacon. I gobble it all down, so hungry I forget that my mom is there to see me. When I finish, finally full, I look up and she’s gone.

Then I’m falling. Falling a long, long way, back into my bed. I wake up, tangled in the covers. A breeze is blowing in through the small windows over the bed, and it brings the sound of birds in the branches of the tree outside. I lie on my side, head aching a little from the blows and all my stupid crying the night before, and stare at the other window, where a row of coleus and wandering Jew cuttings are lined up in small crystal bottles I’ve found at garage sales and Goodwill. Henry keeps his eyes open for them now, too. Light breaks through them into shards, making shapes on the ceiling and walls.

Mom.

My heart is hollow with missing her, with the sense of her arms around me. In the quiet morning the pain is too deep for tears. I feel lost and alone. My body feels bruised and battered.