Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (18 page)

She asks me about Skate. In true
girl-to-girl style, I tell her
everything
! Including that his name is really
Sebastian Kade Darby
II
. This elicits
uproarious laughter from her.

“
So he is also rich, like me.”

“Apparently.”

“
And he chose to give up college to
pursue
a life in arts,
like me.”

“Apparently.”

“
Hmmm
.” She pulls out the erotic sketch and I see her legs go
closer. She downs a quick glass of vodka. “Blaze, dis picture and
dis vodka make me so fucking horny. God!” She gets up and fans her
top, walks to the balcony. She opens the glass door and lights up a
Parliament.
a
gust of chilled air rushes in,
blowing her lightly curled hair back, and crawling up through my
denims to make my skin break into goosebumps.

“Is warm today, no?”

“No!”

She smo
kes her ciggy dry and kills it in an outside ashtray. When
she gets back in, she says. “Blaze, I hope you are not planning on
seeing your sexy boyfriend tonight. Because in Russia, whenever we
meet a good friend, we drink lots of vodka.”

“Well, in America, when someone offers you
lots of vodka, you never turn it down.”

She smiles. And that’s when the girl-fun
starts for real.

Vikki’s accent not only comes out when
she’s flirting with boys, but also wh
en she’s getting a little tipsy. “Tonight is not
deserve cheap Vodka.” She lifts her glass. “Chee
rrr
s.” And downs it. She’s standing. I’m sitting. The
Vodka’s cutting a blazing firetrail down my throat by the time
she’s poured and downed another for herself. She smacks her lips.
“Ahhh,” she says. “Is good for voice!” And she pulls out another
Parliament, but doesn’t light it.

I’m still trying to recover from the
red-hot liquor shock. She takes the glass from my hand, fills it
up. I down it. This time I don’t stay quiet. I stand up like
there’s a poker up my ass. “Mother
FUCK
!
GAWHD
that
burns!” She takes my glass. Pours. Puts it in my hand. When I stare
at it, wondering why it’s moving when I’m absolutely certain my
hand is steady, she nudges it up with her fingers. And it lands in
my mouth.

My legs go wobbly. I sit, glass dangling.

She takes it, pours, in my hand, nudge.
Drink.

Again.

The room spins faster. I feel like I’m at
the end of a lasso, being swung by a freaking cowboy on a hotdamn
bronco
Oh
yeah baby bring it on WOW!

And now I’m guffawing.

The forty-plus dollar bottle of Vodka
disappears in less than an hour.

Vikki pulls out a phone from her purse,
flips open the book-style cover. Plugs it into a solitary speaker
standing on a pedestal in one corner.

Understand this now: I’m standing looking
at her (more like swaying—and don’t ask me how I’m standing when I
was sitting a second ago), the empty glass in my hand, and it’s
difficult to keep her in focus. I’m also feeling...warm and bubbly
and happy...in my chest. And I’m kinda wondering why,
because...

Wait. Where was I?

Thump. Thump. Click. Thump.
Thump
.

Lorde.
The
song is
Royals
. “OH MY
GOD I LOVE THIS SONG!” I sway, close my eyes. The glass and my hand
are doing this kind of sixties hippie-in-the-sky movement where all
I need now is a tie-dye shirt and a little extra hair down below my
arms and I’d be talking to Vikki about how much I love her and the
world and how it’s all connected and—
Wow, I’m happy!
“
Gimmmeszummorrevodka
!”

Vikki cracks up laughing. I stumble back
onto her two-seater, examining its leather intently. Trying to
discern its very substance. Now, if it would all just sit still
long enough...

Vikki’s next to me with—and it takes me
about a whole minute to figure this out—orange juice.
“Huh?”

“
Ve
drink more orange juice first, then back
wiss
Vodka!”
VawhdKKA!

I
can’t put up much resistance. She pours a bunch of OJ in my
glass. I down it, stick my hand out. After the third glass, I’ve
had enough. I lean back on the couch’s side-rest and look up at the
twirling ceiling. When I say “I love him, you know” (which comes
out as “
I...lovem...yoooooo no!
”), it’s as if I’m expressing a revelation to the universe
itself. As if I’m talking to some unknown entity in the room here
with us. A gaseous substance. A fabric of some sort—the very
essence of our galaxy...

Yeah,
Imperial Vodka
—good shit.

The spin of the room becomes too
pronounced
—a dying ship
on a swirling ocean. I kick my Skechers off, stretch my legs out
onto Vikki’s lap (she’s since sat down.) She’s drinking out the
bottle now (the OJ bottle!) “Love is good
ssing
, you know? Is reason for life. That and
music.”

In my current state, any statement
requires deep thought, whether to understand its ramifications, or
simply to understand what the hell’s just been said! My lip goes
numb as I ponder that last word from her.
Music.
She’s staring straight ahead at her cupboard with
no TV. Then she looks at me, and starts laughing. I laugh with her,
not because anything’s particularly funny. But also because it is,
I mean, it really is
freaking
uproarious!

“
You’ve made me feel so much better, Vikki!
So much better about...
everything
.” She grunts a chuckle out.

She gets up and pulls out another
Imperial
bottle, gestures with it toward
my glass.

“
Oh, god, no. I’m done for today!” I look
back up at the ceiling. I hear the bottle hit the glass table after
she pours herself another drink. “I really do love him. I dunno if
that’s because I’m drunk as a skunk and I’d probably love anyone
right now. But I do. I love him with all my heart. All of
me.”

“
You are talking of blond
e boy, no?”

I frown at her, notice she’s starting to sway
a little more herself. And it’s not just my vision. “Yes! Him!
Declan Cox.”

“
Cocks?
”

No funnier statement has ever been made in
the history of funny statements. I make a note to let Kevin Hart
know about this one. When we stop laughing, she says, “He is really
sexy guy. Big muscle. And unbelievable tattoos.”

“
Yes, and unbelievable
sex
! Fuck, it’s hot with him!” I realize—somewhere in
the distance—that this is the vodka talking, sort of.

“Blaze, you must stop or I am going to get
even more horny now.”

“Call him!”

“Your boyfriend?”

“
No! He’s mine!” I slap her wrist.
“Sebastian Kade the
Second
!”

“Who?”

I snatch the sex sketch from the table,
shove it in her face. “SKATE!”

“Oh. No, Vikki is not in good state of
mind.”

“You’re in the perfect state of mind! Call
him!”

She suppresses a chuckle, and a
mischievous glint passes over her liquid eyes. She gets up and
stumbles over to her bag. (At which point I think:
If
she’s
drunk, I must be utterly and
completely zonked!
)

She hunts in her purse for her phone. She
can’t find it. She empties the contents out onto the floor (one box
of
Durex
Pleasure Pack
, three
lipsticks, a mirror, a scrunched-up copy of
Vogue
, cigarettes, papers, half a sandwich, a piece of
lettuce, sunglasses, sunglasses, sunglasses...etc etc etc ad
infinitum forever and so on) then sits on a stool by her kitchen
counter, scratches her head. “Where is my phone?” She looks up at
me, and about an hour later (or so it feels like it), I look at the
speaker she plugged it into. We laugh. She gets up and grabs it (oh
thank god that thumping noise is over. I need
silence
!) She sits back on the stool. Her heel slips
twice off the crossbar at the bottom of it. She holds the phone to
her ear.

“
Is...Skate?” She smiles at me. “Skate...is
Viktoriya here.” She almost falls off the stool.

Then she says, “Want to fuck?”

And
then she puts the phone down.

Before we pass out completely, I actually
remember to ask Vikki to give me her demo songs. Because I wanna
mix them into my set at
Sacrament
.

It’s not long after that when I fall
asleep.
..

The dreams I have are hot and
sensuous. I toss, I turn. My skin goes
fiery. Declan’s pulsing cock enters
me and I’m sweating, moist, thrumming all over internally. My pussy
tightens, wettens, squeezes and zings as his shaft grinds slowly in
and out of me, glistening and massive.

He groans, roars. I moan. His bright blue
eyes shine into me. His face contorts.

He explodes inside me and, in my
dream, I explode as well...

In life, my eyes fire open.
And I’m starting to get an idea
of how Vikki felt when she got up earlier and fanned herself after
I reminded her of Skate. Because I feel the same now: Tense as a
steel-iron pole holding up a mammoth skyscraper, needing only a
breeze to make it snap.

I stretch a hand down over my underwear.
I’m sticky as hell; just examining it almost makes me burst. I bite
my lip hard.

I put my hands back under my head, and I
think of Declan. And how much I need him...

Vikki’s on the floor, head on the couch,
legs stretched out. Passed out.

I call Deck to see what he’s doing, and to
tell him I love him. And that I need him.

But he squashes the call.

And that makes me abruptly
cold.

Declan Cox

Someone calls. I squash it without even
looking at my phone.

I’m talking to a Dr. Abrahams because “Dr.
Gehrig is at our Swiss institution right now.” Abrahams tells me
that Gina’s case is worse in the sense that she’s fallen into a
catatonic state where she doesn’t even receive perception from the
environment anymore. Before, she might startle
at the break of a bottle, even throw a fit
and maybe get violent.

None of this is happening now.

“And that’s a bad thing?” I ask,
simple-minded that I am. “Is it not good that she’s not getting
violent?”

“
A child who cannot speak will cry and wail
when it needs something. It will make itself heard. It never sits
back and lets its toothache pester it, or its feces sit
unaddressed. It makes a noise. It’s a natural survival mechanism:
Calling out to those stronger than it, to help it. As it gets
older, it will resist and protest actions that it feels hurt its
survival. Sometimes violently. Children lack the speech and vocal
abilities to reason with their enemies, so they resort to physical
defenses. At least when Gina was
reacting
, she was still, in some remote way, in touch with
the world. Yes, the world was full of monsters and living
gargoyles, but those gargoyles represented
real
people. I’d enter a room, and she’d think I was an
angel. Not insane, just a little ‘incorrectly wired’ so that the
perceptions aren’t received accurately. But, now, she doesn’t even
notice me entering the room. In other words, she doesn’t fight
perceived threats to survival. She’s given up—or, her mind has
given up, which is really the same thing. And that is very bad.
Because when a person fights, there is still hope for them, even if
they fight the wrong thing. It’s when the fight goes out of them
that the hope is gone. Gina’s fight has gone out of her,
completely.”

“
My friend
—
our
friend,
Gina’s and mine—told me you think me seeing her
might...
jog
...something
or other?”

He sighs. “Dr. Gehrig’s idea. He’s the
head doctor here. He had a look at her before returning to
Switzerland. Her case had deteriorated drastically by then. And he
suggested it to her parents.”

“Who no doubt went ballistic.” Doc Abrahams
here doesn’t comment on that. “Doc, can’t you just medicate her or
something? I mean, aren’t there drugs for this kind of stuff?”

“
Medicate what? She’s already...” He looks
around, then turns me away from a nurse at the end of the corridor.
When he talks, his voice is low. “Mr. Cox, I wouldn’t say this to
her parents. But what exactly would we give her—sedatives? Her mind
itself is a walking sedative. We’re trying to
wake her up
from this dark sleep of hers, this
continuous nightmare she’s in. It’s so simple, a light trigger, a
person from the past... Anything could do it. If we understood the
triggers of the mind, we could simply press that button. But we
don’t. Either way, this isn’t a psychiatric institution. We’re a
home. We offer rest and quiet. Her parents chose us because
we
don’t
prescribe
drugs. If they want to go that route, they’ll have to put her in an
institution. We’re not holding her here. They could do that if they
wanted to. They don’t believe it’ll help her—devout Catholics or
something.”