Mega Rough Draft

I knew Kate for years. I was sent to Brown to complete my undergrad and she stayed and went to UCLA, became a vegan and started dating a pilate’s instructor twice our age. By the time I got home I barely knew who she was anymore. I doubt she did either. She wore loose tops and jeans that slipped up and down her hips. She prayed to earth gods, crickets or whatever. I prayed to the porcelain god. I laid in the shower the morning after a long night out. I decided to come home to Los Angeles instead of finishing the last semester of my senior year. I wasn’t sure I could make it though anymore. I’d gone east to get things done, but what I really needed was to head home and clear my head.

It was home or rehab, really. This was before it was chic and fashionable to fall apart on your parent’s dime so I went home and hid. That was, at first, but as large as Los Angeles is it’s really quite small when it comes to something like returning home for mysterious reasons. Kate showed up a week after my arrival, as I look back on it, I’m sure my mother called her to help me get out of my funk, but I’m not sure what difference it makes now.

In sails Kate with grace and ease, her skin glowing like a freshly struck match. I was in pajamas. The same pair I’d worn for the last three days. The silk stuck to my sweaty, unshowered body as I rolled over, turning my back to her. The thing was Kate didn’t rush into the room and shower me with rays of happiness and love. She shut the door and left me there to sulk. I got out of bed, took a shower and made plans to meet her later for lunch.

Nothing ever really changed with her, at least not in the way where people incur obstacles and figure out ways to deal with them. Kate just sort of pranced in and out of various scenes where things were always pleasant and she was the omen of good times. On the other hand, I was the devastating typhoon that happened on an afternoon you expected a mild shower.

Kate had chosen some alternative lifestyle restaurant where everything tasted like dirt. I wore all black and ordered a bottle of red wine. I watched her eat her weeds and talk about her spiritual awakening. Apparently, this guy she was dating had fulfilled her in all possible ways. I asked her what it was like to fuck someone our parent’s age and she laughed. Kate hadn’t exactly been around the block, but she’d had her fair share of suitors.

“I wasn’t for sure at first,” she said in her Cinderella way. I imagined birds and mice helping her get dressed. “He was just persistent and eventually I figured, why not?”

“Persistant like what, the census bureau?”

She laughed, “Not exactly. I’m not sure how to explain it. He just made himself present and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

Immediately I was interested and jealous. Mostly I was jealous. Back at school I’d been dating Josh, a bi-polar idiot from an upper crest family. He hated taking all his clothes off during sex and I hadn’t cum proper in as long as I could remember. I liked him though. I liked him because he looked the sort of way I’d always envisioned the guy I’d be with. I liked him because he didn’t argue with me and he showed me off to his friends. I liked him in a way that made me get wasted and fuck all his friends, but he never did anything about it. I never expected he would.

Kate asked me about Josh and I told her there wasn’t much to tell. Then she pointed to my ring finger with her fork.

“Oh that,” I said mockingly.

Before I’d come home. Before drinking made me lose track of the days and nights, and everything in between, Josh took me aside and as clinically as possible explained to me that he’d been accepted into law school at Yale and the next logical step for him to take would clearly be marriage. At first I wasn’t for sure if he was asking me to marry him or if he was breaking up with me. After a while I stopped listening to him, thinking that this was it, he’d finally found it in himself to end it with me, but then he got on one knee and fumbled in his pocket, dropping the ring in the process. It was on my finger before I could answer and he was on the phone with his parents before I could object.

“Josh and I thought it would be good to spend some time apart,” I heard myself telling this to Kate. “Just some fresh air before the next natural step.” She grabbed my hands and told me how happy she was for me. I looked at her face and could tell she meant it.

Truthfully, the moment that ring was placed on my finger I stayed as far as possible from Josh. I found myself drinking harder than ever and waking up in the beds of men I didn’t even remember meeting. I finally called Josh and told him I needed a break. I needed to go home and really think about things. He couldn’t agree more. I should go home and take some time off, visit with my family, connect with old friends. Maybe what I needed, he said, was just some time at the beach, away from classes and the pressures of my real life. What I really needed was a way out.

The next day, Kate called me while I slept. Over voicemail she asked if I wanted to go to some dinner party her boyfriend was throwing. It sounded like some sort of terrible middle-age tragedy, tons of his friends, boring couples and Kate. I put a robe on, walked onto the balcony and lit up a smoke. I could hear my mother from across the house, yelling, asking if I was smoking. I shut the doors and ashed over the railing and onto the patio below. I called Kate back and told her to pick me up at eight.

We got to his place shortly before nine. I was running late and had already started drinking. We drove up Beachwood Canyon, winding into the hills, until we were in an area I was barely familiar with, a place just out of reach. We walked up the steps to his house, Kate hugged me and said she was happy I was there and for a second I believed her.

“Nina,” Kate said, “this is Bruce.” I shook his hand and rolled my eyes. Everything in his house had a place. It was immaculate to the point of perfection. I wanted to run through there and tilt everything thirty degrees. I wanted to set things on fire. I wanted to turn the place into a war zone. But I smiled and shook his hand.

“Bruce! You should give Nina the tour. Give her the tour and I will make us some drinks,” Bruce looked at me and winked.

“Well this is the kitchen and that is Kate and if you follow me into the living room, here is Sarah and Tom. They’re married. This is their night away from the kid. That’s Greg. He’s single. And those people outside, are the people outside and they’re getting stoned.”

“Charming,” I said flatly.

“Bored already?” He leaned into me. He had a long face and a lean body. His jeans hung low on his hips as he turned back to the kitchen, grabbing my hand. “Let’s not forget our drinks.”

Kate handed us our drinks. He drank bourbon in a tumbler. His giant hand embraced the glass until you could see nothing but the rim.

“You still drink a dirty martini, right?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, “Not that it matters since that’s what I made you.” She handed me the glass, spilling most of it as she sprinted into the party, her golden hair waved goodbye on her way out.

I laughed. Bruce raised an eyebrow and stared into my face in a way that made me look away and finish my drink at once.

“So she isn’t made of stone. It’s good to know cause I was thinking about using you as a fixture outback in the garden.”

I laughed again and smiled coyly.

“Oh, I’m not always this uptight. I think it’s how perfectly placed everything is here. I think it’s making me crazy.”

“How’s that?” He asked while making me another drink. I handed him the martini glass. It was stained with dark lipstick. “I guess we’ll see.”

Overall, it was a sort of boring night and a lackluster party. The married couple had to leave at eleven. Then it was just a group of lonely middle-aged miscreants and then Kate and I, sitting around Bruce’s dining table telling stories. I was audacious. Telling bawdy tales of conquests I’d had. I was flirting with Bruce. It was thick in the air. I’d throw my head back and turn my head in a way that made my hair tickle my neck. I was goofy and vulnerable. I needed another drink. I headed to the kitchen.

Bruce followed close behind. He placed his finger to his lips and grabbed the bottle of vodka and put it in a cabinet that appeared to be the rightful home of medicine and vitamins.

“Shit, it looks like we’re out of vodka,” he yelled from the kitchen. I was barefoot and giggling. “Looks like we’re gonna have to get some or this party will die.”

He grabbed his keys and my hand in the process. In that moment Kate and I both knew what was about to happen. She stood up and began to protest. Saying something about it being Bruce’s party and that he shouldn’t have to go. She even nominated Greg to take me down to the market. Bruce interrupted her, telling her we’d be right back. We never even made it to the market, let alone down the street. I fucked Bruce in his silly SUV. His boring status symbol. I fucked him and came immediately. Then I came again. I fucked him because I knew it was wrong. I fucked him because I wasn’t fucking him at all, he was fucking me.

When we returned empty-handed to the house no one even noticed. People had already started to leave and what was left was a small trickle of people that felt bad leaving Kate alone in the house while her slutty friend fucked her boyfriend. I was wearing sunglasses. I didn’t even remember putting them on. I went out back and had a cigarette. Kate came out after me and stammered for a second. Bruce called her back in before she said anything. I sat outside and kept smoking. Eventually, Kate returned and asked if I was ready to go. I smashed my cigarette into the ashtray. It’s light expunged immediately. Unlike the rest of us, it suffered a quick death.

The ride home Kate and I were both silent. When we got to my house she pulled up to the street. I told her she could pull into the property and come in for a drink, but she said she needed to go home. I shrugged and opened the cardoor.

“He asked for your number,” she said quickly once I was outside the car.

“Who did?” I leaned in and looked into her face.

“Bruce.”

“Why’d he do that?”

She looked surprised. I shrugged and told her I’d call her in the morning. I walked up the driveway and before I even got into the house my phone was ringing. “Unidentified caller.” I sent it to voicemail and went to bed.

I spent the next month with him, like he was a project or a rival. He’d call me and tell me to meet him at his house. We’d fuck. He’d bite me. He’d tell me what I’d want and when I objected he tell me I was lying. After sex, every time, I’d roll over to get dressed and he tell me to get back in bed. It always turned into a charade. I was not getting dressed. I was not going anywhere. He had a client, but he’d be back in a couple of hours. I was not to go anywhere. I’d roll over and go to sleep.

We went on like this until Josh showed up at my house. I’d been avoiding his calls and not calling back. He pleaded with me to come home. He wouldn’t ask any questions, he said. He just wanted me back. And he cried. He sat on my bed and wept like a little boy.

“What am I supposed to say to people?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m sorry.”

I sat next to him and touched his hand. He flinched and stood up, wiping his eyes.

“Fine. I get it. You don’t have to deal with me anymore.”

I went to Bruce’s that night. I showed up at his door without calling. He led me inside. We never spoke. His rugged skin brushed up against mine. There is something different about the skin of an older man. It’s ripe with life, cooked by the sun, and lived in. I thought about this while my arms were wrapped tightly around him. I thought about this and the way my legs probably looked as they wound around him. I thought a lot about the way I probably looked to him as he turned me over and tried talking dirty to me, but mostly I thought about Kate and what she’d think about the whole situation.
While fucking me he paused and grabbed my face, “Where are you.” It was more of a command than a question. I never answered. “If you’re not going to be into this then what’s the point?” I rolled over. Once he was asleep I slipped away unnoticed and left him for the airport.