No Sleep till Wonderland (15 page)

We’re awkward together. We bump into each other and take turns acting as obstacles in our own paths. My limp doesn’t mesh with her crooked-mile. We’re grinding and dulled gears in a dying machine. By the time we get to Rachel’s apartment building, my arms shake and quiver. The brown bag weighs as much as a small car. My eyelids are just as heavy despite the energy drink.

The front door is unlocked. I don’t know what that means. Up the stairs and through another unlocked door and into the apartment. Inside, there’s a stale smell of sweat and accumulating laundry. I drop the bag on the kitchen table and take off my jacket. I’m breathing heavy, and I might be whimpering out loud.

“You okay?”

“Nothing a bottle or two of ibuprofen wouldn’t take care of.”

Jody takes off her sunglasses and throws them onto the counter behind her. Like a plane crashing in a cornfield, they don’t land well, clattering and plinking off a ceramic jar. She says, “You pretending to be a doctor today, or something?” Jody rips the brown bag, a lion tearing open a kill. The bags of chips and bottles of vodka spill out on the table.

I say, “I play one on TV.”

Jody goes more than half full with vodka in a jumbo, not-so-clean plastic cup. She adds two scoops of lemonade mix, a fistful of ice cubes (she drops two on the floor and kicks them under the table), and a splash of water. Homemade hard lemonade. Hard enough to crack rocks.

I say, “Is that for me? If it is, I’m going to need more ice.”

“This is mine.” Jody takes a deep drink of the grog, then exhales sharply enough to blow out hundreds of birthday candles. “Help yourself.”

If it was only that easy. “Tell me about that credit card.”

Jody grabs a bag of chips and turns away. With her back to me she says, “Go find it and take a look. It’s in my bag somewhere.” She stomps into the living room, falls onto the couch, and turns on the TV. It’s loud but doesn’t say anything.

My head gets heavier, filling with too many thoughts, and it all churns up the murk. Since she didn’t take my ibuprofen cue, the doctor heals thyself with a couple of pulls from the vodka bottle. It burns my teeth. Take two and call me in the morning. The vodka is awful, cheap stuff, not that I know any better. The drinks might’ve been a mistake, but I won’t dwell on it.

Jody’s black bag is on the kitchen counter, next to the open container of lemonade mix. There’s a dusting of yellow snow on her bag. No sugar was added. I unzip it, and my hands do their thieves-in-the-night routine, crawling around inside. Among other debris, I find three almost-empty prescription bottles (one with the label torn off), a cell phone, an iPod, a pack of gum with only two thin pieces left, a pack of cigarettes with only a few smokes missing, three two-dollar winning scratch tickets and one loser, and a fistful of tampons instead of dollars. I also find a credit card and two fake Massachusetts driver’s licenses.

The name on the credit card is Fiona Langan. One of the fake licenses matches the name with Jody’s picture and a Framingham street address. She doesn’t look like a Fiona. The other license also features Jody’s not-smiling mug but with the name Sue Booth. Sue lives in the swanky suburb of Weston. Sue is doing well, and maybe she owns a mansion and a yacht.

I take another pull off the vodka bottle, although I know better. The heat expands in my belly, and I imagine it diffusing directly into my sore and battered muscles. It’s the least I can do to help them out. After the not-so-wee nip for courage, I stroll into the living room, cradling the precious and fragile vodka bottle in the crook of my left arm and carrying the credit card and IDs in my right hand. Pick a card, any card.

I ask, “Where’s Rachel?” The living room is in the same condition that it was yesterday, with the couch as a makeshift empty nest, wrapped in a white bedsheet.

“Out. At work, I think.”

I turn the TV off and sit on the opposite end of the couch. Jody grips her jumbo cup with both hands, face buried inside. She could be little orphan Oliver, contemplating the risks of asking some miserable, terrible person for a spot more gruel.

I hold up the fake IDs and say, “I didn’t know you had twin sisters.”

She speaks into the cup, into the plastic. There’s an outline of a faded logo on the cup’s side, but it has been long since rubbed away. “Look. You can’t tell anyone. You can’t tell ’em. I can’t get caught again. They find out, they’ll take JT away from me. Forever. I mean it. I’ll never see him again. That can’t happen. He’s mine. I can’t let that happen. I don’t know what to do. We’re so fucked.”

Part of me thinks that she talks about JT like he’s a repossessed car and that’s her ultimate problem. I know that particular conclusion isn’t quite fair.

“Where did you get the IDs and credit cards? Did you get them from Eddie?” I take another sip from the vodka bottle, then put it down next to the couch before I do some real damage.

“Eddie didn’t know nothing about this. I never told him nothing. This was my thing, not his. It was the only way I was gonna pay off all the bills, get JT new clothes, get him the stuff he deserved, you know, without none of Eddie’s help. JT’s a good kid. A great kid.”

“I’m sure he is.”

Jody stands up and drinks a heroic amount of her drink, although there are no heroes here. She puts the sweating cup on top of the TV, then returns to the couch and sits next to me. Her legs touch mine, and I feel the heat of her skin through the thin green cloth of my scrubs. I wonder how many people before me have worn these same pants.

I say, “All right. It wasn’t Eddie. Where’d you get the fake IDs?”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“I can’t make that promise.”

Jody repeats herself. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I’m not here to get you into trouble or report you to anyone.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to figure out what happened the night of the fire. I’m trying to figure out why it happened.”

“You were there, and I wasn’t.”

It’s an accusation. One that’s true. And it’s meant to sting both of us. “I know.”

“My IDs have nothing to do with the fire or with Eddie.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

Jody fiddles with the stud below her lip. She says, “Your buddy Gus gave me the IDs.” She laughs and runs a clumsy, heavy hand up and down my right thigh.

I spasm and rise up from my seat like a bee stung me. I settle back down, a layer of sediment, and push her hand away. I say, “Let’s stay friends, Jody.”

She smacks the back of my hand, the violence and urgency are more than a little intimidating. My hand retreats. The coward. She crushes my already weakening resistance movement with one swift blow.

Jody smiles, and the smile might slide off her face, fall to the couch, and disappear between the cushions. She’ll find it later, flattened and smooshed up against some loose change, pens, and the other forgotten debris of her daily existence. Or she’ll never find it again.

Jody says, “Gus recruited me. That’s how he put it. I was his recruit.”

My buddy Gus, Jody, and identity theft. I remember Gus’s apartment with the high-end, photo-quality printer and the sheet of laminate wedged next to his hard drive, and there was Eddie in his apartment, too, eagerly waiting to leave his indelible mark on Mark. I think about grabbing the vodka bottle off the floor. I might need to hurt myself a little.

Jody edges closer, draping one of her legs across my lap. Like her hand, the leg is drunk heavy, and it falls on me like a tree in the forest nobody hears.

She says, “He gave me credit cards and matching IDs every couple of weeks. I could use them wherever, but I’d have to run some errands for him, too. I got nothing for free.”

Her eyes are half closed, and her hands resume the Genevich exploration, rubbing my body while in contempt of gentleness. It’s like she’s waxing a car and can’t get me to shine or can’t buff out all the scratches. That’s not to say—to my utter shame and excitement—that I’m not having any physical response to her handling.

“Stop. Please, stop. You don’t need to do this, Jody.” My voice goes small, and my conviction is smaller. I’m the junkie uttering a breathy, anticipatory, and completely fraudulent no. Unlike the night at Ekat’s apartment, where reality was as thin as toilet paper and my senses clearly addled, every sensation is mine right now: the weight of her palm, the stubble of her legs, the smell of her lighter fluid breath and the smell of her hair, the taste of the cheap vodka coating my drying mouth, the prickly wet of my ass sweating through the scrubs. Unlike the night at Ekat’s apartment, there are no cute stories or rubber bands or dreams. I am awake.

Jody doesn’t listen to me. She doesn’t stop. She puts a hand under my chin, pushes my head back, and licks my unshaven neck. Her lips are wet and sloppy, and my skin is hypersensitive. I’m at the edge of being ticklish and feral. I’m so easy. My pulsing and guiltless erection presses against her leg, and her leg presses back.

I have to say something, to slow it all down, if not stop it. “What errands would you run for Gus?” I’m so polite. I try to envision Gus as a Robin Hood, stealing credit cards from the rich and giving to the poor, but I’m distracted.

“Once a month or so he’d send me to the Connecticut casinos or to one of the dog tracks around here and get big cash advances on the cards. And Gus took half.” Jody sticks her tongue in my right ear, and I let her. I’m all ears, closing my eyes, and I continue to press against her leg. Her fingers go almost delicate on my face, tracing the cracks and lines of my brow and cheeks, tracing my history. Maybe I should ask her to rub it all away. I know I’ve tried.

What are the implications of our continued and increased physical contact? Am I taking advantage of her? Is she too drunk or too desperate, or not desperate enough? What will she expect of me after? What do I expect of her after? Will there be an after? The cheesy and regrettable pick-up line
How can it be so wrong when it feels so right?
runs through my crowded head, and it makes me feel worse. I’m sinking lower than the subbasement that I usually inhabit.

I try to push Jody away again. She says, “Stop fucking doing that.” She doesn’t say,
Let’s just feel good, feel something for one lousy fleeting fucking moment, all right?
But it’s what she means.

“Where did Gus get the credit cards?”

“I don’t know. Never told me.” Her hand snakes inside my shirt, and she pinches my left nipple. I yelp, but not because it hurts. Nothing hurts right now.

“Did Gus recruit anyone else?”

“Don’t know. But I got caught with a card, like three weeks back, at the Hub. No big deal.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing really happened to me, and I told Gus about it. He kinda shrugged if off but said something about his partner wouldn’t be happy.”

“Who’s the partner?”

“I don’t know.”

Jody grabs my right hand by the scruff and sticks it between her open legs. The thin material of her shorts is damp and warm. She closes her legs on my hand and presses my fingers against herself.

I say, “Do you know who Timothy Carter is?”

“Never heard of him.”

My fingers pulse between her legs, and she rocks back and forth in a rhythm upon which we agree. I say, “Holy shit.”

Jody laughs, pushes my head back, and grinds her face into my neck again. Teeth or her stud piercing pinches my skin.

“Did Eddie find out? Does he know?”

Jody climbs up over my neck and pushes her face into mine. We smash our mouths together, sealing tight. We lick and bite each other’s lips and share the secrets of our tongues. We separate, holding our mouths an infinitely small space apart from each other, and we try to hover there because we believe in that place like we’ve believed in nothing else in our flawed lives, but we can’t stay. The distance is too much. We kiss again, even harder, knocking our teeth together, drawing blood. We wordlessly argue over who will swallow the other first.

Jody breaks our clinch, bites my bottom lip, and stretches it out, then lets me go. I didn’t want her to. She says, “Eddie didn’t know nothing. I didn’t tell him nothing.”

The lizard part of my brain, one that I assumed had atrophied because of disuse, fills with an irrational jealousy of Eddie that I have no right to, and I think about saying something smart and cruel about how she ratted me out to him. Instead, I pull my hand out from between her legs and fill my fist with hair from the back of her head. I pull her farther away and then back, pressing her into my imperfect face. I want her to pass through me and come out the other side.

I say, “Eddie didn’t know or he didn’t say anything to you?” talking out of the side of my occupied mouth.

“Same thing.”

We stop talking into each other. It isn’t anything we said. Our mouths become tight seals again, tight enough to block our bottled-up screams. I reach to put my hand back between her legs, but she’s coiled and twisted, and my wrist doesn’t bend that way. She shifts, aching to comply, but there’s no leverage and my angle is awkward.

Jody grunts. I grunt back. We communicate shared frustration. She rolls off me and says, “Stand up.”

I’m too slow to put my ass under my feet and clumsily paw at her right breast instead. She grabs my arm, yanks it, and yells, “Fucking stand up!”

I jump up and almost fall but manage another small step for man. Standing is a good position. We kiss more, playing a game of push-hands with only our mouths; we bend and sway, no other body parts make contact. She’s only two inches shorter than me, but the slight uptilt of her head fills me with an odd mix of gratitude and someone-tear-my-clothes-off lust.

Jody unties her shorts, then shimmies as they slide past her hips and knees and pool around her feet. She hooks her thumbs in the waistband of her underwear, but I interrupt by sliding my left hand inside the lower elastic between her thighs. I pull the curtain of her underwear aside and hold it there while my right hand slides two fingers inside her. Jody gasps into my mouth and grabs two fistfuls of my shirt. I slowly take my fingers out and then quickly rub and press her clitoris. Jody’s legs go jointless, knees bending in all directions.