I did not know what she was talking about—what hatred, from when, or how it had transpired. I only knew the answer.
No, I said.
I would have climbed out of the pool but my ginch was sloshy with water.
It’s beautiful out there, I said.
I’d like to leave, she said.
I did not know how to answer. I loved Halifax. But I would have left in a second for her.
Where to? I asked.
She shrugged. Somewhere else. Maybe Vancouver. Maybe Japan.
Once you finish school?
I suppose.
What about Chris? I asked.
How could I not? I realized she was crying.
The city gave up strangely distant noises from below, and there was a smell in the air that could have been rain.
What’s wrong? I asked in a softer voice. I should have climbed up beside her. But she had folded up into a tightness of bent neck and arms and legs.
Nothing, she said. And she wiped tears and smiled quickly at me and looked back out on the harbour.
So I said nothing back.
Rebecca
must have taken my room key, because it wasn’t in my jeans pocket. We knocked on the door of the room and it was strangely silent inside. It became uncomfortable, because I knew what must be going on. I wondered if I should steer Susan to the ice machine or onto the street for coffee or some other ridiculous place, just to give Chris time to escape from his latest predicament unscathed.
Then the door opened, and Rebecca stood there, her big hair even more messy than before, but a sleepy expression on her face.
Sorry, she said, and added, Chris is totally conked.
We went in. It seemed true, to my relief. Chris was twisted on the bed, his head tipped awkwardly back on a pillow, his jaw hanging open, his hand dangling off the bed. I had hoped that this once he would be caught. He got away with everything. And Susan, like his parents, like his teachers, like his police friends, suspected nothing.
Can I stay here? Rebecca asked. I’m too tired to go home.
Susan walked by without answering.
Of course, I said. It’s a king-size bed. Plenty of room. I meant it. Innocently even.
We took turns using the bathroom. I was last. My underwear was soaked. I saw Susan’s soaked underwear hanging over the bathtub faucet. I took off my jeans and wrapped a towel around my waist, left my shirt on. There were two hotel toothbrushes, both opened from their plastic seals. I did not want to use one that Chris had used, so I took a chance and used the one that seemed most recently wet. I brushed and urinated and looked at my face in the brightly lit mirror, and did not recognize or like what I saw. Then I turned out the bathroom light and went back into the room to go to bed.
The lights in the room were off too, and it was pitch-black. I stumbled, swore, heard rustling, found a bed, climbed onto it, then under the sheets. There was plenty of room. The towel was rough against my skin and I tugged it off.
I stuck to my side of the bed. Rebecca was on the side closest to the middle of the room, as near to her protector, Susan, as possible.
I think I fell asleep. But I’m not sure if it was for ten seconds or an hour. I felt beneath the sheet a touch on my leg. Just a toe or a heel. The touch stayed. I could sense the warmth of a body. I became as erect as I had ever been. But I didn’t dare move or even breathe.
I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. The blackness was gone. The room was flooded with the pale light of the full moon outside. It must have manoeuvred its way into our portal, on the ship we sailed across the sea.
I could make out Rebecca’s head on the pillow next to mine, and the line of her shoulder. I felt her hand reach back, blindly, and touch my stomach. My entire body jerked with the shock.
Then nothing. So I waited, barely breathing, my heart thundering in my chest.
Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I slid closer and spooned Rebecca from behind.
I was not wrong to do so. I felt her back press into my front. Her hand pulled my hand onto her breast beneath her shirt. I felt her large nipple. She bent her head away from me and exposed the nape of her neck. I knew I was meant to bite there. So I did, as quietly as I could, and Rebecca responded as quietly as she could. We did not even rustle the sheets.
But when I opened my eyes, I saw that Susan, lying on her side on the bed opposite, was watching. With the moon, her face was as clear to me as if the light was on. The only thing that made it difficult to see her was the way she had huddled into the sheet. She was tucked into it, from the chin down, and her large eyes were unblinking.
I stopped nibbling on Rebecca’s neck and stared back. Susan did not move. She was so still that I wondered if she slept that way, eyes open, like some kind of vampire. I would have stopped if I could. When doing illicit things, you always stopped and backed away when you were caught. But Rebecca had not stopped. I closed my eyes without meaning to and felt the sweat on her back and below her arms and the tightness of her neck.
It became ridiculous, and I pulled Rebecca onto her back and entered her from above. Though we remained silent, we did what we did as though we were alone.
I
woke up to a shitstorm, and while it was impossible to pretend I was asleep, it was also impossible to extract myself from the twisted covers. Susan stood in front of the bed with a breakfast plate in her hand. She was wearing panties but no bra, and her tits, finally revealed to me, were even more beautiful and perky than I had ever imagined. Chris sat up in bed, a breakfast plate in his lap. I saw a trolley with more breakfast dishes and shiny covered plates in between the beds. I did not see Rebecca. I wasn’t quite sure how I could have slept through the arrival of such an enormous breakfast, or the departure of Rebecca, but I certainly could not have slept through Susan’s screaming.
I want you to tell me the fucking truth, she said. She was kicking something with her foot, and I heard the rustle of newspaper. Don’t give me this Saudi prince shit! Acid-washed-jeans-wearing motherfucker!
You think I robbed a fucking bank? Chris said, his voice calm but beginning to rise in volume, a growing wrath I’d rarely seen. Think about what you’re saying. You don’t want what I give you, why don’t you stop fucking taking it!
Then fucking take it back!
And she threw the breakfast plate at his head. He flung himself out of the way, none too gracefully, the plate on his lap flipping off the bed, his torso caught up in the sheets as he fell off, and he thumped to the floor with one leg still entangled. But at least he’d avoided the heavy porcelain, so sturdy that it did not even smash when it thudded into the wall. The contents slid down the wallpaper in a slow spreading smear.
I expected to be next, once her wild eyes locked on mine, but she turned her back instead, and pulled her skirt on over her
head, something I’d never seen done before and never imagined possible. Next her bra and shirt and then she scrambled around on all fours to look for her flip-flops.
And why don’t you guys just fuck each other and let me know how it is!
And with that, and a horrific door slam, she was gone.
I
waited for some sign that it was safe to speak, and when no sign came, I slowly sat up in bed. I looked around. I was naked and the sheets had bundled together at my groin. I could see Chris now, still lying on the floor with one leg tangled up in the bedclothes. He looked back at me, then picked up a piece of bacon from his chest and took a bite.
Holy fuck, she can get dramatic, he said.
I swung my legs off the bed and tried to get my bearings. Chris tugged himself loose of the sheet and crawled around to the foot of the bed. I heard more rustling of paper and he stood up, naked, a newspaper clenched in his fists. He scanned each page in turn, throwing them aside when he’d finished.
You want a coffee? he asked as he continued to flip pages. There’s a pot there, unless the fucking she-demon knocked it over.
I found the pot on the trolley, and a mug that was under the TV stand. I poured a cup. My hand was shaking.
Here it is, Chris finally announced. He read silently for a moment, then he crumpled the paper up and chucked it away.
Jesus Christ, I am not fucking lanky.
I retrieved the newspaper ball, smoothed it out, and began to read, my heart thumping madly.
I read about the robbery of the Penhorn Mall branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. I read about a lone male still at large, armed and considered dangerous. I read that no one was injured. I read that officers had arrived at the scene within minutes, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with a tracking dog. I read the word
lanky.
Police described the man they were seeking as white, about six feet two inches in height, lanky in build, clean-shaven, with short blond hair, between twenty and forty years of age, wearing acid-washed jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a black and silver motorcycle helmet with a black visor. Police were not releasing details on the amount of money taken but said none of the money had yet been recovered.
Susan thought it was you because you wear acid-washed jeans? I asked.
Yeah, he said from the bathroom. What kind of bullshit is that?
The injustice of it.
Were you chased? I asked.
I heard a flush. No, that’s fucking bullshit too.
He emerged, face washed, scrambled egg picked from his chest. He put on his shirt.
I lowered the newspaper to my lap and lay back down, paralyzed.
Come on. Get up, he said. I’m sick of this shit. I can’t get the smell of scrambled egg out of my nostrils. And I can’t even flush the toilet from the dump I just took. I practically had to beat the thing back with my shoe just to get out of there alive.
So I rose, as bidden, to get dressed.
Lanky, Chris said. Fucking chiselled god is more like it.
At the front desk, we turned in the keys. Asked if there were any additional incidentals beyond the room service to charge to the room, Chris said, Yeah, the mini-bar. The desk clerk said, What items did you have from the mini-bar? And Chris said, All of them. So we added those in too, and did not cop to the Led Zeppelin–like condition of the dishes and walls, not to mention the unholy terror Chris had left in the toilet. It seemed, all things considered, that we were being unusually honest and more than fair.
In the Fiero, I asked him once again about Susan.
You think she’ll tell anyone?
Tell what?
What we did.
No. I’ll convince her she’s crazy when I talk to her later, and I’ll act all pissed off for a day or two and then everything will be all right again.
If you say so.
And then, my next area of concern.
What was Susan so mad at me for? I asked.
What do you mean? He was impatient with my question, still irritated and grumpy.
You know, the shit she said about us fucking each other. What was up with that?
I could not stop thinking about Susan watching me when I was having sex with Rebecca. Had I misunderstood her stare?
Oh, that. He laughed, still grim, but more amused suddenly. That was just a bad strategic move on my part.
I asked what he meant.
It’s personal, he said.
Fuck that, I replied. What is it?
You really need to know?
I really need to know.
Jeez. Okay. Well. Susan and I have had the occasional conversation about her interest in girls.
I hesitated, then asked for more detail.
She did a little experimenting in her youth.
Her youth?
When she was fourteen or fifteen or something.
What kind of experimenting?
With a couple other girls.
Experimenting what?
They were playing the doctor thing.
The doctor thing.
And it went a little further than anyone expected.
Further like how?
Like pussy licking far.
I blinked stars from my eyes.
So naturally, Chris continued, when she told me about that particular series of youthful incidents, I’ve brought up the idea a few hundred times since.
The idea?
The obvious logical extension.
Of her having sex with a woman?
Yeah, but like with me.
A threesome.
Three’s a good number. Four. I like all kinds of numbers.
Holy shit, I said.
Yeah, he agreed, I could pretty much die fulfilled after that.
A long pause while we contemplated our own individual agony. Then I forced a point of clarification.
But you were talking about you, Susan, and other girls, right? You weren’t talking about anything to do with me.
He grimaced. Fuck. Just when I was getting the smell of scrambled eggs out of my nose, you make me feel all sick again.
Well, what the fuck did she mean when she said we should go fuck ourselves?
Don’t worry about it.
I’m going to worry about it until you tell me why.
Jesus, fine. He winced. This morning, I suggested Rebecca as a candidate. She’s always saying how cute Rebecca is, and how nice her breasts are, that kind of shit.
Oh, I said, and remembered the stare. Had that been its reason? A chance to imagine the threesome?
Is that why Rebecca left? I asked.
No. I didn’t suggest it while she was there. I was a total gentleman about it. I suggested it when she’d left.
But when I was there?
You were asleep.
And what did Susan say?
She blew me. So I have to assume the idea was not unappealing.
When I was there?
Like I said. You were asleep. Is there an echo in here?
But—
Chris interrupted. I actually could use some quiet time for a bit, he said. I’m a little wiped out.
So I stopped talking and let Chris drive. I was hungover, exhausted, sick to my stomach about the newspaper, and somewhere, in a place of far less prominence than it deserved, satisfied about the sex I’d had with Rebecca last night.
Fucking lanky, Chris said, as if to himself. I got to get to the gym.