Authors: Jack Ketchum
They were supposed to be seeing Raquel Welch and Jim Brown in
100 Rifles
at the Colony tonight with Tim and Hanna and Phil and now here he was breaking the date. Just because he was pissed that this new girl, this Sally whatever, wouldn’t go out with him. Ray was the one who had the car. The Griffiths’ was in the shop again and Tim had had some kind of fight with his mother last night so she wouldn’t lend theirs to him. If Ray didn’t go, none of them went. All Ray wanted to do was drink beer and smoke dope and crank up the music in his apartment. She was getting sick of the Rolling Stones and especially sick of
Their Satanic Majesties Request
and she was tired of hanging around drinking. She was drinking too much these days anyhow.
She grabbed a beer and popped it open.
“She’s a Rainbow” was
really
getting on her nerves.
“How come you listen to this psychedelic crap anyway? You hate hippies.” She practically had to shout.
“It’s the Stones.”
“No it’s not. The Stones is ‘Get Off My Cloud.’”
“That’s old Stones.”
“It’s
good
Stones. This is junk.”
“Look, anything the Stones do is fine by me. The Stones are
bad
, man. Just like Elvis is bad and Jerry Lee.”
“Elvis? Elvis is a goddamn mama’s boy.”
He waved her off. “That’s all just publicity shit. Like he doesn’t smoke or drink. You tell me Elvis doesn’t smoke or drink or chase the babes. Come
off it.”
“What about all those stupid musicals? What about
Girls, Girls, Girls
? Singing to little brats for godsakes.”
“Yeah, well. They have kinda de-balled him lately. It’s still Elvis.”
He was pacing the apartment, beer in one hand and joint in the other, singing along with the music, snatching at a line here and there, swigging the beer, pulling on the joint. She had to admit he had a real good voice. Sounded a little like Jerry Lee. But you couldn’t communicate with him when he got like this. He was pretending to be lost in the music, pretending everything was cool. When it wasn’t cool. All over some new potential piece of ass.
Why she kept on putting up with him she didn’t know.
She loved him, that was why
.
Even though he fucked her over constantly.
Like now.
But the fact of the matter was that in the long run it didn’t matter
what
she did or didn’t do, she was damn well doomed anyway. And doom was the right word for it—she wasn’t being melodramatic. Her whole damn
family
was doomed. Heart disease or cancer, one or the other, was going to get all of them sooner or later. Her mother had died of breast cancer when Jennifer was six. Her big brother John had a heart attack at the age of twenty-six. Dropped dead right in the middle of cleaning his customer’s windshield. He wasn’t even overweight. She was eleven years old. Her father died of lung cancer when she was ten and her older sister Ann had been diagnosed with a brain tumor just last year. The tumor was in remission but Jennifer knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t.
Something very nasty was going to get to her too. It was only a matter of time.
When something like that was waiting around the corner for you she guessed you could pretty much put up with anything.
The foster homes. Ray. Anything.
But this, the way he was acting—it was just so goddamn
boring
.
“Come on. Forget about this Sally person, will you? Let’s go out and have a good time. Let me call Tim and Phil and tell them you changed your mind. Come on. Please?”
She was whining. If you could whine and try to shout at the same time, then she was doing it.
She hated herself for the way she sounded.
“Why should I let you call and say I’ve changed my mind, Jennifer? I
haven’t
changed my mind.
Fuck
Jim Brown and
fuck
Raquel Welch. I am not in the mood. Period. It has nothing to do with Sally.”
“Oh, no?”
“No.”
“Ray, you only get this way when there’s something you want and can’t have it. Sally whatsername’s not it? Then tell me what
is
it.”
“Get off my back for chrissake.”
She walked over to the stereo and turned it off.
He looked at her like she was crazy. She guessed it
was
a little unusual for her to stand up to him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I’m into that.”
“I want to get out of here, Ray. Anywhere. I want to go to the movie. Can we please just go to the movie? I want out of this apartment!”
“You want to get out of the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something wrong with the apartment?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong with the apartment?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with the apartment.”
“Then what the fuck
did
you say?”
“I just . . .”
He drained the bottle of beer and walked over to the sink. She was glad to have the distance between them when he got nasty like this. He stubbed out the joint and placed the roach carefully on the edge of the ashtray.
“What’s wrong with the apartment, Jennifer? You don’t like the color? You want me to paint it for you, maybe? You don’t like the decor? You want me to redecorate?”
“Jesus, Ray. I just . . .”
“
I want I want I want.”
“What?”
“
I want I want I want
. You want to get out of the apartment? Then get your fucking ass out of the apartment.”
“C’mon, Ray. I just want to see the movie, y’know?”
“Here’s the movie, Jen.
I’m
the fucking movie. The movie’s
right here!
You get it?”
Then suddenly he was moving, smashing the bottle on the edge of the sink and coming toward her with the broken green neck of the thing held in front of him like a knife and she backed away from him all the way to the door, not really thinking he was going to use it on her but scared of him anyhow, it was absolutely right to be scared of him when he went into a rage like this because you couldn’t tell what he’d do, it all came on so fast and furious. He reached into her hair and pulled her head back to the door and held it there and pressed the broken bottle sideways to her cheek. She smelled the dregs of beer inside flat and sour.
Her cheek was wet but it was only beer. He hadn’t cut her.
He let go of her hair and dug into his jeans.
She didn’t move a muscle. The bottle lay flat against her cheek.
He took out his keys and handed them to her and then he lowered the bottle.
“Here. Take the fucking car. Call your little friends. Get your sorry ass out of here.”
“Ray, I . . .”
“You put the slightest nick on that car and you are screwed, you got that? Screwed.”
She nodded. She wanted to say she was sorry. But it wasn’t going to do any good now. It was better just to shut her mouth and leave. At least she was going to get to see the movie.
“I, um . . . I need some money.”
She hated asking him. She
always
hated asking. But if you were a girl and a high-school dropout in this town with no particular skills like typing or anything you were practically unemployable except in the shittiest jobs and the ones that were lowest paying. She made a little selling his dope, a ten percent cut but she at least should have finished school like Tim.
But after what had happened with those two girls in the woods that night she couldn’t stand to go back to school. She felt so exposed. Every time some kid even looked at her in the hall she’d think,
he knows
. Somehow he found out. Somebody told. She felt as though her soul were showing and it wasn’t a good one, it was a very bad one and everybody could see it.
“You need money. Figures,” he said.
He dug out his wallet and handed her a twenty. She stuffed it into her jeans.
She swung the door open and looked back at him over her shoulder. He was already in the kitchen at the refrigerator reaching in for another beer. Maybe he’d be passed out cold by the time she got back, asleep in front of the TV. Maybe the booze and pot would mellow him some.
And maybe you shouldn’t come back at all
, she thought.
Sure. Right.
You need him and he needs you.
And then there’s that other thing. That night in the woods
.
She couldn’t leave him if she wanted to. Not unless
he
left her first.
It was all this new girl’s fault. If this Sally Richmond, that was her name, if she had just agreed to go out with him once or twice none of this would have happened. They’d have gone to the movie and had a good time together. She could stand sharing him with other girls, she knew she didn’t have that much to offer when you came right down to it and she’d been sharing him for as long as she could remember but when these moods came on that was another thing. She couldn’t stand these moods. They seemed to happen more and more lately. She bet this new girl was college-bound, that the motel job was just a stopover, some summer thing. While they were stuck here, her and Ray.
Her sister was no help. Her sister was married with a kid and probably dying and didn’t want her. The Griffiths, her foster parents, were nice but they were no help either.
They were all they had together. Her and Ray.
She’d find some way to make it up to him.
She stepped out into the driveway and headed for his car.
No dings, she thought. No fender benders. You have to be very careful.
He lay down on the waterbed. The record was over, but now that Jennifer was gone he didn’t mind the silence. He thought about Sally, about their little talk on the second-floor landing.
He’d waited until four o’clock to make his move. Figured, let her settle in, get comfortable. He walked up the steps to 208 where she was changing sheets and waited outside beside the laundry cart. When she came out he was smiling at her. Great big grin.
“Hey, Sally, how’s it going?”
“Not bad.”
In fact-she looked a little beat. The first day on the job they always overworked themselves. If they didn’t, you knew they wouldn’t last long, wouldn’t go the distance. His mother demanded hard work from all the girls.
“Not the most interesting job in the world I guess.”
“The interesting jobs are usually taken.”
She closed the door and pushed the cart down to 209 and unlocked the door. He followed a few steps behind.
“You got that right. Assistant manager’s not exactly thrill-a-minute either. Pays the bills, though, I guess. Gets you a night out now and then. You going to school?”
She nodded. “In the fall.”
“New York I bet.”
“Boston.”
“Boston? Great town.”
“Oh? You know Boston?”
“Nah. Just what people tell me. My dad was stationed there in the navy. Said it was pretty cool, though. Other guys say so too.”
This wasn’t going all that well. She wasn’t warming up to him. He’d yet to get a single smile out of her. Whether she was overworked or not, that bothered him. He waited while she walked inside and stripped the bed and pillowcases and collected the dirty towels and brought them out to the cart.
“I figured I’d just hold on to the job for a year or so. Get myself a nest egg, y’know? Then try out NYU maybe.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or Columbia. Columbia art school, I figure. What’re you going to major in?”
“Photography. For starters, anyway.”
“Really? You’re a photographer? That’s terrific.”
She brought the clean linen in and set it on the chair and proceeded to make the bed. He stayed at the door. He didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t want to look too forward or anything.
“Listen, maybe you’d photograph me one day. See, every now and then I jam with some friends, y’know? We’re getting a band together. So we could use some photos. For promotion, publicity. Think you might want to do that?”
“Actually I just do landscapes.”
He laughed. “So do a landscape. Only put
me
in the landscape. Put the band in the landscape. Could be cool, right?”
She tucked in the corners of the sheet, moving swiftly around the room from one side of the bed to the other.
“I’ll think about it. Okay?”
And now she did smile, bending, looking up at him.
Not much of a smile. But something.
“You know, a whole bunch of us are driving up to the Point tonight, drink a beer, relax, have a look at the sunset. Really terrific sunsets up there. Want to join us all after work?”
She plumped the pillows. “I don’t think so.”
“C’mon. It’ll be fun.”
“You’re my boss, remember?”