Beyond the Pale Motel (13 page)

When we separated simultaneously, there was something in his eyes I couldn't understand. Surprise? Tenderness? Sorrow? Pain? Maybe even aversion. I wasn't sure. But I knew this—my vital organs were sinking stones.

I closed my eyes so as not to see his expression anymore. All I wanted was pleasure, a way to kill the hurt. His lips felt as soft and full as they looked, soothing me as I suckled them. His hands were back on my neck, on my shoulders, gently tugging at my bra, touching my breasts, flirting with the nipples through the thin fabric of my blouse. He laid me down on the mattress, still kissing me. I moaned as he cupped my whole left breast in one hand, holding my heart. I could have come just from that touch.

I felt him undoing my blouse, button by button, taking off my skirt, unhooking my bra, sliding my panties over my hips. Everything gentle and slow and so easy. I opened my eyes and saw him standing above me, looking down at my face, not at my breasts, not between my legs. His eyes had softened again.

“You're so different from other women,” he told me.

I froze and put my hands over my belly. I wasn't like those girls he photographed. Is that what he meant?

He seemed to know what I was thinking because he brushed my hair away from my forehead with the tips of his fingers. “You're loving. You have depth.”

Dash didn't want me but Cyan did. For him, I was enough. “Please,” I whispered. “Cyan. Please.” I grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to mine.

“Is it okay? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. I was sure.

Then Cyan unzipped himself and pushed inside of me with one tight thrust, and I had exactly what I wanted. The little death. But it was a big death, really, the most wrenching orgasm of my life.

The room had darkened completely, purple orchid pollen clinging to our skins, stamens lapping at us like tongues. We rolled into the night flowers together. I lay with my head on his chest, listening to the grainy sound of his heartbeat, my hands reaching up to feel the shape of his jaw, down to palpate the breadth of his torso, his narrow hip bones. We might have stayed there forever. But he got up, gathered his clothes, and went into the bathroom. When he came back fully dressed, he sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

“I'm sorry, Catt,” Cyan said, without look at me. “I didn't plan that. I guess I've been wishing it would happen in some ways, but I would never … I'm so sorry. I never want to hurt you.”

What had happened? What had we done? I had blamed Dash for being a sex addict. I was the worst addict of all.

Cyan stood up. “I'll let myself out. I have to get back to Seattle, anyway. That's what I came to tell you. I just wanted to tell you to take care of yourself and let you know I was leaving.”

No.

 

#8

 

The next night, after working late, I went to Body Farm to try to sweat out as much of the past few days as possible. Big Bob was there, of course, training Leila, who wore her hair in two braids. This made her look younger and seemed to emphasize the tiny spray of freckles on her nose. She smiled, and I felt the same way I did in high school if a popular girl acknowledged me, the way I used to feel when Bree first became my friend. Proud but also anxious that if I became too close, she might take everything I had. And now that was Cyan, too.
But you don't have Cyan.
Bob's mouth remained grim as he gestured for Leila to continue pumping iron.

“Where's Scott?” I asked.

“Not feeling well,” Bob sneered, a vein in his neck bulging. “Stayed home again.”

I'd texted Scotty—no answer. I did a short, distracted workout. Leila, fresh from the shower, her hair still wet, waved good-bye to me as she left.

It was getting dark outside and the gym was weirdly empty. The air was on too high and my skin goose-bumped.

While I was finishing up on the StairMaster, I saw, in the mirror, Bob staring fixedly at my butt and rubbing his chin. I turned around and glared at him.

“Looking good there, Catt. I'd like an ass like that,” he said. And grinned.

*   *   *

On the way home I stopped at the market and went by Scott's house. He answered, disheveled and unshaven; usually his skin was as soft and smooth as Skylar's.

“Where've you been?” I asked with more edge to my voice than I'd intended. As if it were somehow his fault that I'd slept with Cyan.

“Here. Sorry I didn't answer you. I haven't been feeling great. Stomach flu or something.”

I made him soup with the miso I'd bought for him earlier and sat with him on his futon while he ate it.

“Poor baby,” I said, feeling his forehead with the back of my hand. “Don't not answer my texts anymore, though, even if you're dying.”

He laughed weakly and his eyes peered up at me through his lenses, asking what was going on.

I couldn't tell Scott about Dean. I didn't want to upset him by talking about what Stu had said to me or about Michelle Babcock. I especially didn't feel I could talk about Cyan. Maybe if I had confided in Scott, he would have been able to tell me more about what was really happening with him. But instead of asking how he was in any meaningful way, I asked if he thought Big Bob was acting extra-weird.

“Of course, he's always been weird.”

“But now especially, right?”

Scott frowned at me. “Where are you going with this?”

“Oh God,” I said. “I don't know. Now I feel like a complete asshole.”

“No, no, Catt.” Scott shook his head back and forth, so his hair, which he'd let get longer than usual, fell across his face. “I just think you're under a lot of stress right now. With Dash and everything. And maybe you're feeling a little extra-sensitive to things.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure, I'm sure that's all it is.”

“Catt?”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to freak out. I know you have a lot going on, too. Have you talked to Emi?” At least I asked him that.

“No, she won't speak to me. Thank God I have you, though.”

“Do you need to see a doctor?” I said. “I'll go with you.” Scott hated doctor's appointments.

“No, no, I'm good. Just been a little run-down.”

When I left his place, I thought I was doing okay, but by the time I got to my neighborhood I was a wreck. Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I hadn't eaten all day, I hadn't slept well, I'd just spent an hour with Scott but it was like neither of us were really there. And angry, I was angry. At almost everyone and everything in my life. At Dash and Darcy London. At Jarell and Dean and Carlton. At Bree for suggesting I sign up for FU Cupid. At the women at work for draining me with their needs. At myself, most of all.
You slept with Cyan. You slept with Cyan.
The corner liquor store flashed its neon sign at me. The posters of phallic bottles and cleavage. Tatted flesh, because of the neighborhood we were in. It would be so easy to buy a bottle of Jack, take him home, and finish him off.…

Instead, I picked my original addiction—Dash.

I called him. It was the first time I'd called since he'd moved out, although I'd been tempted, especially after the message he'd left about Michelle Babcock. As I punched the buttons, I realized how amazing it was that I'd resisted calling him this long, especially since he had reached out first after what happened to our neighbor. But my discipline was blown now. He answered.

“I almost had a drink,” I said by way of a greeting.
I fucked your brother.

“Catt?”

“No, it's your mom,” I said. Which was a shitty thing to say. First because she was dead, and second because he hated anyone to even mention her. “I'm sorry.”

He ignored my shitty-ness and my apology. “When you say almost, how close was it?”

“I drove past the liquor store. And thought about stopping.” I realized how stupid I sounded.

“Listen, Catt, I can't really talk right now, I'm in the middle of something, but I hear that you need help.” His vocal cords sounded strained, the way he did for a week after a gig. “Do you still feel safe in that neighborhood? After…”

“I got an alarm system,” I said flatly.

“Have you called Bree and Shana tonight?” Dash asked.

“Not yet.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. Because I can't talk right now. But you can call me if you can't reach them. When's the last time you went to a meeting?”

“A few days ago.”

“Okay, so you need to get to one as soon as possible. Are you meditating?”

It was almost funny. Meditating? Really? I didn't answer.

“But call Shana now, okay? Right now?”

I was silent, gulping down a sudden, errant sob.

“Catt? I care about you. I didn't mean to hurt you like that. I hope someday we—”

I hung up.

I didn't go to the liquor store.

I called Shana, who left the charity fund-raiser she was attending with her girlfriend, Gia, and came right away, dressed in a narrow, white tuxedo-style suit and hot-pink satin Manolos. For someone so pretty and delicate looking, she was one tough bitch when she wanted to be.

“You have to do the steps again, Catt. I'm not going to waste my time with you otherwise,” she chastised.

I nodded, eyes on the floor.

“Honesty, open-mindedness, and doing the right thing. It's our mantra. All of us. Remember that.”

“Okay, I will, I just…”

“You just what?”

I didn't want to do all the steps again. Especially the Fourth Step inventory. Especially now. I would list Dash, Darcy London, Jarell, Carlton, Dean, Stu, Big Bob, the psycho on FU Cupid, Cyan, my mother, my father. Bree for suggesting I go online to find a man. Even Shana for guilt-tripping me about my behavior. I felt they had harmed and threatened my
self-esteem, emotional security
and
sexual relations,
if I used the AA terms. What could I have done differently? Not married a sex addict, not had sex with men who didn't love me in order to relieve the pain of my life, avoided Stu and told him to come back when Bree was there, joined a different gym so I wouldn't have to see Big Bob, not gone online to find a man so soon after Dash left, not let Cyan get so close to me,
not slept with Cyan,
gone to more meetings, called Shana more often. What about my mother and my father? I didn't have the same choice there.
You were just a little kid. You didn't ask to be born to them, to have to witness the fighting, the betrayals, the abandonment.
But I could have responded to my father when he tried to contact me, I could have sought out my mother and held her hand when she died. There, I'd done my inventory. I didn't need to write it down or think about it anymore. Still, I promised Shana I would hit a meeting in the morning and go every night after work for the whole week.

 

#9

 

Spring moved into summer like a child resentfully becoming an adolescent, mortified by sweat glands, acne, and pubic hair. The excessive heat we'd had in April got worse and set everyone on edge. The air smelled flammable, gasoline prices and unemployment jumped again, fires still raged through the canyons, murder rates went up. At Body Farm I switched back and forth between the news (explosions, fires, floods, tornadoes, rapes, shootings) and, when it got too depressing, reality shows, which sometimes made me equally depressed, if in a very different and ludicrous way. On one dating show a woman was considered crazy for “stalking” the men she dated by googling them beforehand. I pleaded guilty to this behavior. On another show celebrities compared the scent of their vaginas as if this were sanctioned public behavior. Not guilty. Anorexic models were told they had no personality to speak of and thrown, hobbling and sobbing, out of the competition. Thin women with minuscule noses, shoulder pads, and high heels bitched out the fatties, threw away their clothes, and made them cry. On an entertainment-gossip show a famous actress had her breasts and womb removed to prevent the cancers that had killed her mother. Darcy London was featured with her baby, Python. She'd started a line of punk-rock baby clothes, called Mommy's Lil' Punk, complete with pink and blue skeleton-shaped safety pins holding them together. The biggest local news story was still the Hollywood Serial Killer.

I read about the murders constantly now, staring at pictures of Mandy, Adrienne, and Michelle, trying to understand what might have happened to them.

I didn't leave the house much, except for work, errands, and meetings, which I'd limited to three a week, telling a displeased Shana that was all I could manage and that I hadn't been tempted to drink since the day after Cyan left anyway (which wasn't entirely true; I'm sorry, Shana). Another untruth—okay lie—was to Scott about a pinched nerve in my neck that was acting up, so I could avoid Body Farm. The thought of going there and seeing Big Bob's dry-tanned taxidermy face made me sweat and set my heart pounding, so much that I didn't need to work out.

*   *   *

One night I was home watching TV in the living room. I dug my hands into the secret recesses and crevices of the couch, absentmindedly looking for lost change or pens. My fingers felt something hard and I pulled at it. A piece of chain? I pulled some more and released a delicate golden necklace with a word written in cursive script that reminded me of the pleasant dreaminess of a 1970s folk-rock album cover.

California,
it said. I had no idea to whom it belonged. Maybe Bree—it looked like her style. She picked up when I called her.

I realized, when I heard her voice in the night, that maybe I had been pulling away from her. Only seeing her at work where we were too busy to really talk. It seemed she had been pulling away from me, too. Ever since, what? Dash's leaving? (Was she worried I'd be too much to handle without him?) Cyan's asking me to dinner? (Was she jealous? No way.) When I told her that I was tempted to take a drink? Did that make her worry about her own sobriety? Or was I imagining her distance, projecting? There were too many layers.