All That She Desires: The Stranger (3 page)

She shrugged and didn't reply. They drove the rest
of the way into town in silence, passing through the forests and farmland of
the region, before arriving in the Town of Green Lake, a center of eight
hundred people.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"A restaurant first," she replied.
"I'm starving. And then a grocery store and I'll pick up some stuff to
take back with me."

The town wasn't a very impressive place. Mike laid
out the options: the fish and chips shop and the family grill restaurant. Fiona
directed him to the family restaurant. "You're coming in too, right? I
don't want to sit in there alone. I'll buy."

"Sure," he said. "I'll grab a
sandwich or something."

They parked and went inside the restaurant. The
server, a middle aged woman, greeted Mike by name and guided them to a booth.
She smiled at Fiona, but showed no sign of recognition.

"Looks like you're the famous one here,"
she said as they opened their menus.

"I've been coming here for years," he
said. "The cottage where I'm staying is in our family. I've eaten here a
hundred times." He put down his menu. "If you don't mind me asking, I
mean, I know that you're not big on questions, but what are you going to do up
here? Steve doesn't even have a TV in that place."

"I noticed," Fiona said, scanning over the
menu. "Is anything good here? This looks pretty blah."

"The sandwiches are good. I'm having a club.
The pizzas are okay. Everything else is so-so. Are you going to work on songs
or something?"

She set the menu down and finally took off her
sunglasses. "Do you know any of my songs?" she asked. "Like,
have you heard my music?"

Mike gave an embarrassed shrug. "I'm really not
sure. With a lot of pop music it's kind of just there in the background, you
know what I mean? I'm a music fan, and I like a lot of current bands, but that
type of pop stuff is in one ear and out the other. What was your big hit?"

"I've had seven top ten hits," she said.
"That's not really what I was getting at. The stuff I am given to sing is
puerile garbage. It's written by forty year old men, and designed to appeal to
ten year old girls. Its lowest common denominator shit, and I hate it. I hate
the music that is attached to my name. I don't even want to say that I make
that music, because my input in minimal. So no, I won't be working on any songs
while I'm here."

"Wow," he said. "You sound really
bitter. No offense, but it sounds like you hate what you do."

She closed her eyes and nodded. "I am really,
really bitter." Fiona opened her eyes and looked at Mike. "Can I be
completely honest with you for a moment? I know we just met and all and I know
you could be some weasel who will just immediately call the gossip rags, but I
think I need to say this out loud to someone."

"It's okay," he said. "Say whatever
you want. I'm not interested in telling anyone."

"Well, the nice thing is, I don't care if you
tell the world, because I feel completely beyond it at this point." She
took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Then, in crisply pronounced words, she
stated: "I hate my life, and I hate myself." She took another deep
breath. "Wow," she said, "that felt good. Kind of cleansing, you
know?"

Mike stared at her.

The server came and they both ordered club
sandwiches, Mike with coffee and Fiona with a bottle of beer. "I've never
written a song," she said. "I can't even play guitar. A little piano.
That's about it."

"You're not planning to harm yourself while
you're out here, are you?" He looked deadly serious.

She laughed. "Only with alcohol, my friend.
Only with alcohol."

* *

They ate their sandwiches and then Mike took her
over to the town's grocery store. Fiona complained about the lack of organic
options, but she bought a hundred dollars worth of food, paid with her credit
card, and let Mike carry the bags to the Lexus. She was feeling better after
the sandwich, but she still asked him to drive back to the lake.

It was late afternoon when they arrived. Mike helped
her get the groceries inside, and then told her that he would carry on with
painting the cottage in the morning. "Okay," she said. "What are
you going to do now?"

"I'm going to go back to my place," he
said. "I've got my own stuff to do. What are you going to do?"

She shrugged. "I don't know," she said.
"Just hang out, I guess. There's no TV, I've got no internet. Maybe I'll
just sit on the freshly painted deck and look at the lake."

He nodded. "Okay. Look, I'll be back early
tomorrow, so don't freak out if you hear me or see me."

"Sure," she smiled. "I'll have
something on."

He left, and she found herself alone in the cottage.
She sighed. She wasn't used to being on her own, having to do things for
herself, entertain herself. Fiona rolled herself a joint and leisurely smoked
up, then floated around the cottage for a while, gradually straightening away
the mess she'd made the night before and putting everything away in the
kitchen. She even did the dishes, which was something she wasn't in the habit
of doing. In fact, she probably hadn't done the dishes for herself in the last
couple of years.

When everything was done, she drifted around the
cottage looking for something to do. There was a two-shelf book case in the
living room. It had a bunch of kid’s books on the lower shelf. The top shelf
was stuffed with broken-spined paperbacks: legal thrillers and historical
romances. His and hers, apparently. Fiona opened one of the romances and
started to read. She was still high, and nothing really made sense. She tried a
thriller and it looked like it was written in another language. She took a kids
book, something about middle school animal kids solving scientific mysteries.
She sat on the couch and started to read.

*****

Fiona woke up. She was still on the couch with the
animal mystery on her lap. She'd finished about half the book before dozing
off. She figured she could live without knowing how the story ended, and tossed
the book back onto the shelf.

It was nearly dark, and the lake looked calm, like a
blue-gray mirror reflecting the darkening sky. Fiona went out onto the deck
that looked over the lake. It was nice there, and the silence was powerful. She
couldn't hear a car anywhere. She was used to hearing the dull background roar
of traffic in the city. Yes, it was nice, but she was already bored. She was
alone with nothing to do. Usually she was never alone, and she always had too
much to do. It would be hard to sit around just looking at a lake.

She thought of Mike. He said his place was just a
few doors down the road. Maybe he wanted to hang out. She liked him, she
decided. He took her seriously and listened to her, and he didn't try to
bullshit her. And he didn't seem to want anything from her. That was very
unusual. Fiona was used to everyone wanting something from her.

After having a sandwich, Fiona did her makeup again
and changed, putting on a blue dress that ended above the knee. She rolled a
few joints, slipped the open bottle of vodka into her big handbag, grabbed a
bag of chips and went out looking for Mike's cottage.

The first cottage on the right was dark, and so was
the second. The third had lights on, and there was a group of older folks
sitting around a table on the deck, player cards. Fiona kept going. The fourth
cottage was small, and not as fancy as some of the cabins in the area. It was a
plain, boxy little affair, painted dark green, with a red front door and a
light on in the front window. In front of the cottage was parked a small blue
sedan.

Fiona walked up to the door. She could hear music
inside. She listened, and recognized one of her songs. "Son of a
bitch," she said, and knocked on the door.

The music stopped. Mike's head appeared in the
window, and then he opened the front door. "Fiona," he said.
"What's up?"

"You were listening to my CD," she said.
"You said you didn't know me or my music."

"It's not a CD," he said. "They have
this thing now called the internet, and you can use it to listen to music. If
you meet someone and they tell you they're a famous pop star, you can go home
and listen to their songs. Um, what are you doing here?"

"Oh," she said, "Um, I came to ask if
you wanted to share a joint with me. I have this joint." She pulled out
one of the joints. "Do you smoke? If you don't, we could just hang out.
For a while. If you're not busy."

He shrugged and pulled open the door.
"No," he said. "I'm not too busy. Come on in."

Fiona stepped inside. Mike was wearing the same
clothes he had on earlier. They were standing in the kitchen area of the little
cottage, and the living room was directly ahead of them. There were two doors
at the end of the room, presumably a bathroom and a single bedroom. It was an
old place, and like the one she was staying in, it hadn't been updated much.

"Wow," she said. "So, this is where
you live."

He laughed. "Not usually," he said.
"At the moment. Just for the summer really. I need to find a new apartment
in the city for the fall. This place isn't winterized, so I would freeze if I
tried to stay here all winter."

Fiona set her handbag on the small kitchen table and
walked into the living room area. There was a couch and a little TV on a stand,
but they seemed secondary to the easel that was set up next to a folding tray
covered in paints. There was a canvas on the easel. The image on the canvas was
muddy and blurry, done in blacks and purples and yellows.

"I thought you painted houses and cottages and
stuff," she said, stepping forward to look at the painting. "This
is... modern."

"Don't judge that one," he said.
"That's just under layering. As for painting the cottage, that's partly a
favor for Steve, and partly just a cash job."

She looked at him. "Is this what you do? Are
you an artist?"

Mike opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of
beer. "I am working to develop a career as an artist. I guess that would
be the most honest way to put it. I certainly don't make a proper living as an
artist at this point. Would you like a beer?"

"No thanks. I brought vodka." She held up
the joint. "Can I light this in here? Or do you prefer outside?"

"We can smoke it in here," he said.
"I've got the windows open for the paint smell. If you want to smoke
cigarettes though, I'd rather you went outside. That smell tends to
linger."

"Sure." She lit the joint, held in her
first hit, and passed it over to him. "Is that why you need to find a new
place?" she said as she blew out the smoke. "Did you lose your other
place because you're broke?"

He coughed. "I'm not broke," he said,
coughing into his hand. "I just had to move." He took another drag,
passed the joint back and exhaled. He closed his eyes and rolled his head back
for a moment. "If you want to know, I'm going through a divorce, and I
moved out of our place. I figured it would be easy if I just spent the summer
here rent free, and then moved back to the city in the fall."

"Oh, that sucks," Fiona said. "I'm
sorry."

He shrugged and took a sip of his beer.

"On the other hand, fuck it, right?" she
went on. "I mean, get out of it if it's not working, that's what I figure.
I just broke up with my boyfriend a couple months ago. He was cheating on me. I
always kind of figured, because he's such a player all the time, you know? You
know the rapper, Gozzy J? I was going out with him."

"I'm not familiar with him," Mike said.
"I don't really follow hip hop."

"It doesn't matter," she said.
"Anyway, I've been with a bunch of shitty guys, and I've basically come to
the conclusion that love is bullshit, and that most people are fakes most of
the time. Which is a sad way to look at the world, but that's where I am right
now. Even me. Totally fake. I'm so fake I don't even know what the real me
is."

"Man, you're heavy," he said. "That's
so funny. I listened to some of your songs just now, and they're all these
super-sweet love songs. They're like love candy they're so sweet. But you think
love is bullshit."

"Well, why do you think I feel like such a
fake? I have to go all over the place and sing these stupid love songs, and I
don't even fucking believe in love anymore. Hell, I don't even love my parents.
They're a couple of pimps. They've been pimping me out to the music industry
since I was like, twelve."

They passed the joint back and forth until it was
gone and then sat down at the kitchen table. Mike looked bleary-eyed.
"Sorry," he said. "It's been a while since I smoked. I wish I
could, I don't know, give you some really great advice about your situation.
How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-one," she said. "You?"

"Twenty-five. I wish I could like, recommend
some good coming-of-age novels for you or something. That's what it sounds like
you need. You need some really good novels about young people rejecting the
chains of society and finding out how to do what's true for them. I can think
of some of those novels, but they're all kind of... male. I can't think of any
good coming of age novels about young women. I'm sure there are some, but
that's not what I look for, I guess."

"You're high," she said. "I don't
know either. I don't read much. My manager gave me a couple of these self-help
books that he wants me to read while I'm up here, but I'm like, fuck that. I
just want to get wasted and just... be nothing for a while."

He shrugged. "Well, that's a form of
self-discovery. It's very Zen. Just be nothing."

"Cool."

"It's too bad that you don't get along with
your folks though," he said. "This divorce thing has been rough for
me, and it's been nice to talk to them about stuff. It's nice to have someone
on your side."

"I don't really feel that way about my folks.
They make me feel like a product or a brand, not a person. When I was sixteen
my mom tried to talk me into getting breast implants, can you believe that?
Like I didn't have enough body issues already."

"That's terrible," he said.

She nodded. "I cut them loose when I turned
eighteen. They managed basically everything in my life, and I was able to
basically fire them, which is sick, isn't it? I just fired them as my
management team, hired other people, paid them off, and cut them out of my
life."

"Do you think you're better off?"

She got a glass from the cupboard and poured herself
a drink. "Not really," she said. "I'm a total headcase. But at
least I don't have to feel like I'm being whored out all the time."

"That's really messy," Mike said.
"All the same, I'm glad you refused to get the breast implants. There's no
need for a young girl to do that to herself."

"Right," she said. "And so what if
I've got small boobs? My music still sells, so who cares?"

"I don't think the way you feel about your body
should be related to music sales," he said, "and people shouldn't
choose what music they like because of boobs. But you made the right choice
anyway."

"Right," she said. "I forgot, you've
seen me naked. Do you think I need bigger boobs?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No. You've got
an amazing body."

"You're very sweet." It was strange, but
receiving the compliment from this man she barely knew, who didn't seem
distracted by her celebrity, and who didn't want to fawn over her because of
who she was, made Fiona feel very warm inside. Her legs were crossed under the
table, and her thighs involuntarily rubbed together. She smiled at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. "I just decided
that you're very cute."

"You decided?"

"Yeah," she said, and they both laughed.
"I decided."

"Well," he said. "Well, thanks. I
um," he looked at his beer, and drank down the last mouthful, "I'm
just going to grab another one of these."

When he stood up and turned toward the fridge, Fiona
acted on a wild sudden impulse. She stood up and reached behind her back,
unzipped her dress and shrugged it off her shoulders, letting it slide down her
body to the floor. Mike turned around with a bottle in his hand to see her
dressed the same way he'd seen her in the morning: naked, except for a pair of
thong panties. And this time the thong was navy blue.

"Whoa," he said. "What's this?"

Fiona had butterflies in her stomach as she stepped
out of the discarded dress and began walking toward him. "I told
you," she said. "I decided that you're cute."

She stepped up close to him. He didn't move away or
resist, but just stood, watching her, looking her in the eye as the nearly nude
girl approached him across the kitchen. She put her hands on his waist and
stood close enough that her bare nipples brushed against his chest. He was
slightly taller than she was, and Fiona closed her eyes and raised her chin,
opening her mouth just slightly. Mike responded, kissing her, putting his lips
gently against hers, letting them touch, push, caress, explore.

As they kissed, she slowly pressed herself against
him, and suddenly he was backed up against the counter. He reached behind
himself to carefully set the beer bottle down, and then put his arms around
her, putting his hands her back. Her skin was warm to the touch and sensuously
smooth. Her lips pulled at his, and he felt her tongue slip between her lips.
They kissed and her tongue entered his mouth.

He squeezed her against him and let his tongue slide
along hers. His entire body was coming alive. He could feel himself heating up,
and he could feel his manhood swelling and throbbing inside his jeans. Fiona
was pulling up his t-shirt, running her hands along his waist, his back,
feeling his body.