I found Lulu sprawled on her old bed with her face buried in a pillow. The radio was on. The Mattress Warehouse was
having a liqui
dation sale. Kings, queens, twins. Three days only.
“Don’t,” she said, before I could say anything.
“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”
She bolted upright into a sitting position, and I could see she’d been crying. “Don’t do
anything
, for once. Don’t
say
anything, don’t
write anything
down
, don’t even
think
anything. Just go away.”
“I’m sorry, Lu. I swear, I can’t help it. I just—”
“Don’t ask me to forgive you. You haven’t exactly been very forgiving, you know. You don’t even know what you’re saying anymore, you just open your mouth, and hateful things come out.”
“Yeah, well, you made me this way.”
“No, Will. Stop blaming me. Nobody made you this way.
You
made you this way. So you can stop punishing me now! And you can stop punishing Dan and Troy and the rest of the world.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” I sat beside her on the bed.
Lulu recoiled slightly and wouldn’t look at me. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?” She leaned over and cracked the window open.
“I know that.”
She
fi
shed a pack of Camels and a book of matches out of her leather jacket on the back of the chair. She lit a cigarette and plopped the matchbook on the dresser. The matchbook said
Deja Vu, Show-girls, Fifty Beautiful Women and Three Ugly Ones.
I listened to her smoke for a while. I watched her. Her hands were shaking. Her mascara was running.
“I needed you, goddamnit,” said Lulu. “But I
knew
you wouldn’t be there. I needed you like I needed you the night in the garage, as a
…
damnit, I don’t even know. I just needed you. Why can’t that be enough?
If you love me so goddamn much, why couldn’t you be there?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why can’t I just be your sister? Why do I have to be everything?”
“I don’t understand.”
She bit at a cuticle. “I got pregnant.”
My ears started ringing. I didn’t know what to say.
Lulu puffed her cigarette with bloodless lips and sighed upon exhaling. “About three months ago.”
“So, you what? You had an abortion?”
“No.”
“Then, you’re still—”
“No.” She tapped a cigarette ash into her cupped palm. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Neither did I. My ears were still ringing, and there was a bitter lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it, but it wouldn’t go down.
“Does Dan know?”
“No. None of it.”
“Jesus.”
“And he won’t know,” she said. “There’s no use in telling him, now. There never really was.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Wasn’t it
his
?”
“Of
course
it was his. Just drop it.”
The short endings, the brick walls; she was sounding more like Big Bill by the minute. The old Big Bill, that is. “I’m sorry, Lu.”
She didn’t say anything. She tapped another ash into her cupped palm.
“I’m sorry about the letter,” I said. “I’m sorry about not being there, or whatever.”
Lulu leaned over and snubbed her cigarette out on the windowsill.
She scattered the ashes out the window, blew on the windowsill, and stuffed the butt and the matches in the pocket of her coat. “Whatever,” she said.
“You’re right. Okay?
I don’t
know
why you have to be my everything, Lu. You just do. You are. You always have been. And I don’t know what happened. Because it used to be that I was everything to you, for a long time, and you can’t tell me that I wasn’t everything to you, Lu, you
can’t
tell me that.”
She looked toward the window. “You were,” she said softly.
“Well, then, what’s wrong with me? What did I do to you? Am I ugly? Am I stupid? Did I smother you? Was it my acne? Wasn’t I cool enough? Wasn’t I—”
“No. Stop.” Exasperated, she ran her hands over her face. “It’s not about you.”
“You mean, it’s about
you
.”
“No. It’s not. Goddamnit, it’s
not.
What do you want me to say? I love you? Okay, I love you! Now fuck off !”
My ears were ringing again. But this time it was a good ringing.
My mind was racing. I was measuring,
fi
guring:
Okay, okay, TWO I
love yous, and ONE fuck off, not bad, not bad. I can work with this.
“Well, goddamnit, say something!” said Lulu.
“I love you, too.”
“No duh, you jerk!”
“Jesus, Lu, am I supposed to thank you for loving me? Is
that
it?
Because I
am
grateful,
believe
me. But don’t you get it? You don’t love me like you used to, you just love me because you have to. You love me because—”
“It’s not true.”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t see it,” I said, looking away. “I don’t believe it for a second.”
“Well, you don’t see the stupid stars every night, and you still believe in them, don’t you? Sometimes you have to have faith,” she said.
“You should be a politician.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I can’t even tell what the hell you’re talking about. You’re not saying anything. You object, you stall, you evade.”
“I said
I love you
. That’s not a
fi
libuster.”
“Everything’s some fucking metaphor with you,” I said. “I’m talking about
you
and
me
, and you’re talking about the Milky Way! Why can’t you just admit it: You either love me or you don’t.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“See, there you go!”
“Well, it’s not. And don’t start getting nasty again, either. Because I’ll walk right out of this room, and this conversation will be closed.
Forever.”
“What kind of threat is that? This conversation never
goes
anywhere!”
“So, let’s not have it,” she cried. “Let’s go back to the beginning.
Back to the part where you came to apologize for being an asshole.”
“I’m sorry.”
She snif
fl
ed, and put a hand on my knee. “Apology accepted,” she said. “But don’t start, because you’ll just
fi
nd yourself apologizing again in
fi
ve minutes.”
Lulu took a couple swipes at her running mascara with the sleeve of her blouse. She snif
fl
ed and started to sigh, but instead a little laugh escaped her. She
fi
nally surrendered to a smile. I wasn’t sure what all was written in that smile, but I thought I read an invitation.
Before Lulu knew what hit her, I was smothering her with kisses, and her hair was in my
fi
ngers, and my tongue was in her mouth, and even though she was a little stiff, she wasn’t pulling away from me.
She tasted like hot chocolate and cold cigarettes, and it was as though I could feel electricity surging down her spine as I ran my open hand
fi
rmly down the contour of her back. And I touched her with the strongest, most delicate touch in the world—like the thumb of God running down the spine of a baby bird, and Lulu arched her back and tilted her head back and gave a breathy, achy little moan, which in all my life I’ll never forget, because I could feel the force of that breath all through me like a tropical wind.
That’s when Dan poked his head into the room.
Lulu pushed me away and recoiled so fast that she rapped her knuckles on the nightstand and set the lamp to wobbling with her elbow. I’m not sure what Dan actually saw, but certainly he felt the urgent discomfort of poking his head into something unexpected, because he pulled it out again instantly.
“Oh God,” groaned Lulu, as Dan creaked down the stairs. “Fuck.”
“Shhh,” I said. “It’s okay.” And indeed, it was okay. Everything was okay. Because all I could feel was Lulu coursing through me, throbbing and tickling and making my heart beat like a bunch of hippies around a drum circle.
“It’s not okay.”
“It is.”
“No,” she said, turning away toward the window.
“He didn’t see anything.”
“It’s still not okay.”
“Get over it,” I said.
She spun around and shot me a look. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t care who sees.
What does it matter? You’re not even my—”
“Stop it,” she said. “Just stop talking.”
It was hard, but I stopped talking. The only problem was that about two seconds later, I was all over Lulu again, kissing and nibbling and snif
fi
ng my way closer to her mouth, which she scrunched up as she fought spiritedly to elude my advances. But I had her wrapped up so tightly that the best Lulu could do was wriggle and contort and bury her chin in her chest. Finally, she relented. At last I’d overcome her with sheer brute force. And for one miraculous, unfathomably huge, kaleidoscopic, sparkling, iridescent, rainbow-colored instant, Lulu stopped
fi
ghting me and permitted our tongues to loll around like a ball of serpents inside one another’s mouths, and that was one of the great moments of my life. It ended abruptly, however. Suddenly everything
fl
ashed red and my tongue was throbbing, and Lulu broke free of my hold and stood up. She straightened her ladybug skirt and took another swipe at her mascara. “You’re still an asshole,” she said
fl
atly.
And she went downstairs.
Somewhere between calling me an asshole and sitting back down at the dinner table, Lulu reinvented herself again. There was danger in her eyes. I could see it immediately upon resuming my own seat.
Troy must have seen it, too. God knows he’d had enough practice.
I don’t know whether Dan could see danger in Lulu’s eyes or not, probably his mind was still in the bedroom upstairs.
Aside from the spark in her eyes, Lulu betrayed no outward sign of the impending storm, or the disturbance that had preceded it.
The runny mascara was gone. She was a portrait of composure. She ate her cold dinner matter-of-factly, like she was
fi
lling up a gas tank.
She didn’t say anything.
Big Bill turned the conversation toward the Dodgers. Troy said something about the bullpen, and I said something about the Guerrero trade, and somebody said something about Tudor’s
fi
rst outing as a Dodger, and Doug said that the Dodgers sucked, and how even when they were good nobody in L.A. gave a rat’s ass, and for once he had a point.
Finally, Lulu said something and everybody listened.
“We should go out tonight,” she said. “I mean
out
. Drive to Malibu, or Canyon Country, or the desert. Or go see a movie, or
…
oh, I don’t know, do
something
.”
“You can borrow the Duster,” I said, so as not to look like a total asshole.
“No,” said Lulu. “You
have
to come. And Troy, too.”
Troy and I looked at each other uneasily.
“Can I come?” said Doug, looking up from his third helping of mashed potatoes.
“No,” said Lulu and I, in unison.
“Go where?” Big Bill wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” said Lulu. “Somewhere.”
After chewing on this offering for a moment, Big Bill rolled it around in his mouth, and ultimately swallowed it. Apparently the information sated his curiosity. “Mmm,” he said.
Troy and Dan and I would gladly have consented to go anywhere Lulu decided to lead us. No matter how she tortured, abused, teased, or tormented us along the way, we would have followed her to the edge of the earth.
“So, where am I going?” I said, pulling away from the curb. Troy was consigned to the front seat with me, buckled in tightly. Lulu and Dan sat in the backseat, but they weren’t exactly cuddling; they were separated by Dan’s guitar case.
“Let’s get a bottle of something,” Lulu said, looking out the window.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”