Bleeder (19 page)

“She probably wouldn’t. At least not any of the girls I’ve met down here. They seem more interested in a frolic in the ocean.” He gulps the last of his draft. “So, are there any more rules?”

“Yes. Rule 4: If you find yourself masturbating excessively, go back to Rule 1.”

William laughs heartily and bangs upon the table making our beer glasses dance and my full beer slosh over the side and onto the table. By last call, we have polished off several rounds, and when I swagger out, hearing Poe’s victim from behind the stone, it is late and the downtown is spilling out its inebriated patrons. We walk past the restored mansions along Front Street and, passing before the Front Street Inn, find ourselves invited to a party happening on its balcony. We share beers with lively and festive vacationers from Canada before later excusing ourselves and making our way toward home.

“Are you okay to drive?” I ask William as I unlock the door.

He takes my keys from my extended hand.

“Of course. You’re the lightweight here. Just close your eyes and you’ll be fine.”

When I slide into the passenger’s seat with William at the wheel, I wonder if we shouldn’t take a cab, and though I notice a peculiar look in his eyes, something vague and hazy, he walks straight enough to drive.

A light rain falls and causes the swash of the ride to hum its gentle lullaby. My head lobs to the right, to the left, and several times I detect the car slowing, stopping, then speeding again. I come to for a moment and swivel my head round, noticing a man riding in my truck’s bed, getting wet in the light rain.

“Whass that guy doin’ here?” I ask William.

“Oh, he needed a ride,” he says casually.

“Oh.” I think awhile. “Do we know him?”

“No. Just met.”

“So he’s a . . .”

“Hitchhiker, yep.”

My head rolls around for a time, then stills itself.

“Is that safe?” I ask.

“Nope. Not at all. But we’re living dangerously tonight. Driving drunk and picking up hitchhikers. Yee-haw!!!”

We stop at a darkened house along the roadside and the man in back
jumps out and gives us a wave of thanks before William pulls away and I am lulled back to sleep. William nudges me.

“We’re here, you party animal.”

Inside, I stumble out of my clothes, slip underneath my sheets, and fall asleep dreaming about the last girl I remember seeing. She was tall and had brown hair and sat at the end of the bar where I could see the butterfly tattoo on her lower back and, sometimes, the thin line of her black lace panties. I watched her throughout the night, shooting casual and unsuspecting glances her way as I talked and sipped my beer. I think of her as my hand does what it can and as I momentarily recall Rule 4.

MY LOLITA

J
UNE 1995
. C
OMING UPON THE
D
ELUXE
C
AFÉ—A FAVORITE COFFEEHOUSE
of mine—I order a regular and I read of young Werther’s sorrows. They are not mine, for coffee is making me happy again. Today, I feel the precious balm of solitude; the youthful summer warms my heart and stays off the sadness of my lonesomeness.

When I step to the counter for a refill, I notice the young girl sitting there. Her brown hair is drawn into a bun pierced by sticks that make an X behind her head; her blue eyes sparkle from the reflected light of a mirror hung behind the coffee bar; and when she smiles—a seductive spreading of her red lips that reveals white, unstained teeth—and reaches for the sugar, she nonchalantly brushes her hand against mine, sending a quiver of excitement through me. At this point, she shamelessly stares at me and appears uninterested in the young boy with broad shoulders and a marine haircut who talks to her. I catch her eyes on me again, and it electrifies me. I hopscotch her eyes as the bartender refills my cup.

“I’m Charlotte,” the girl says abruptly, breaking her conversation with the boy and being obvious and forward as she extends her hand.

“Nice to meet you.” I shake her hand, a light pumping up and down. “I’m Shelby.”

“Shelby.” She looks up to the ceiling. “That’s such a great name.”

“I’m quite fond of it myself.”

“What’s your last name?” she asks, bending her head low to light a cigarette between her lips.

“Smoak,” I say, smiling with silent humor. Charlotte looks up before lighting. “Shelby Smoak. That’s my name.”

“Oh.” She chuffs at my joke, takes a drag, exhales over her head, away from me. “A writer’s name,” she declares. “Do you write?”

“Not really. I have a few poems and I keep a journal.”

“That’s a start. What do you do?” She is assertive and guides our conversation as she edges her chair nearer. “You look like a teacher.”

“Well, actually, I am.”

She exhales like an actress and shuffles even closer. “Have you seen me before?” Her face is less than a foot away, and I needle my eyes around her faint freckles for recognition.

“I don’t think so. But it’s likely we’ve crossed paths somewhere.”

“Probably. Wilmington might think it’s a big town, but really, it’s not. It’s a small town with the big town appeal . . . but here,” she adds, smiling, blowing smoke over her shoulder, “our paths have definitely crossed.”

“So they have.”

When her friend begins rousing for the exit, Charlotte grabs the bartender’s attention and asks for a pen and paper upon which she scribbles her number.

“Call me,” she says, extending the paper to me. And when our fingers touch, a thrill shoots through me. “Any time after next week is fine.” She stands, extinguishes her smoke, shoves hands in her pockets to straighten their folds, and is gone, winking one last time at the door. I fold the paper neatly in my wallet, as I secretly reach out to her.

The following day during lunch as I pass through the high school courtyard with a few students, us just returned from a morning walk, I hear my name called. I turn and there Charlotte squats in the grass, catching my eye. I tremble. She is a student here.

“Now you recognize me?” she asks, giving me that coquettish smile I recall from the night before.

Life has turned on me yet again. My immediate response is to slink away as my gut reels with the monstrosity of teacher-and-student liaisons. But I cannot leave. Somehow I’m already smitten with the charge of impropriety.

“Ah,” I say casually as she shields her eyes from the brilliant sun. “So you go here?”

“For two more days, I do,” she counters. “That’s why I said call me next week.”

“Clever. Very clever.”

She lays herself out on the grass while I stand over her in an awkward stance that highlights my towering height above her. I cannot help but wonder how she is sizing me up.

“So will you call?” she asks. “I was sincere.”

“If I do call you, you should call me by my real name, Humbert Humbert.”

“Haha,” she says. “You can’t be much older than me.”

“And you are?”

“Eighteen.”

Eighteen,
I think to myself.
That’s good. Very good.

“And how about you?”

“Oh, I’m as old as twenty-two,” I answer back. “But I’ll soon be twenty-three.”

“See there. We’re not that far apart in age. In the grand scheme of time, we’re practically twins.” She flicks a strand of her hair from her face, works her charm.

When the school pours out its students for the summer, I call Charlotte. She is young and beautiful, and I have done nothing but think of her the past week.

“I wondered how long it would take you to phone me,” she says flirtatiously. “Only two days since school let out,” she says, clucking her tongue. “You must be pretty hard up.”

“Oh, I am. And oh so weak.”

“So, why don’t you come by tomorrow? You can start being my Humbert, then. Mommy will be away at work and Daddy left me oh so long ago,” she says sportingly. “It’ll just be us.”

The next day, I am given a quick tour of her home before we find ourselves in the sitting room where the sun shines brightly on an upright piano that she begins to play. From the moment she strikes that first note, I am stricken with a desire for her. She plays very well, and in the cool shade of her parlor with the ceiling fan blowing upon me, I breathe more freely again. She finishes and turns round to me.

“That’s a love song, you know.”

“Ah . . . and what is the world to our hearts without love?”

“How poetic.” She trifles with her hair, twirls it in her fingers. “So you
are
a writer.”

“Not really. Those are somebody else’s words. From a book I’m now reading.”

We leave to grab a bite to eat downtown. We stroll the riverfront. And later as the afternoon heats, we grab cups of iced coffee and amble carefree back to her place. The azaleas long since having lost their blooms, star jasmine and candytuft flower our walk in yellow and white, and the impatiens are just beginning to open their corollas. In the Wilmington breeze, as the smell of gardenias drifts to me along Market Street, I lose my senses and, despite Rule 3, I speak about my tragic flaw. Charlotte freezes, stunned into immobility.

“But you look fine,” she says. “I never would have guessed. I mean you have a little limp, but that’s it.” We walk on as Charlotte asks questions. “So you’re not sick now?”

“No.”

She pauses next to a fence and reaches through the lattice, snapping a flower from its vine. She removes its petals and drops them in our path, and when there are none left, she twirls the green stem in her hand.

“I’m glad you told me. I know that must have been difficult . . . Funny, too, I just heard a statistic recently in health class that said our generation will likely meet somehow with HIV before we die. And here you are. Funny, huh? . . . I guess that makes you like Humbert with a twist.”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “I’m what you might call the modern-day
Lolita.
All sultry, seditious, and now, dangerous!”

She leans toward me for a kiss.

“This is safe, isn’t it? Kissing?”

“Yes. Why? Do you feel weird kissing me now?”

“A little. But isn’t the idea of a kiss that you don’t think about it. That you just enjoy it and let it be.”

“That is the idea,” I say as we kiss again.

On her porch, Charlotte pumps her feet to keep the swing moving and she hums a little tune, the one she played earlier, and comments that she cannot get it out of her head. And as we talk, the distance between our ages fades and begs to be forgotten. Her words drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil.

“You should kiss me again now,” she says with a wanton grin spread upon her beautiful face. “Before Mommy comes home and finds us together.”

So I unroll an arm around her and draw us together. Below the waist, I am a sure compass, fixed and pointing.

A few evenings later, we drive out to the sea and swim and splay ourselves upon the shore as the sun fades and casts our lust in twilight’s shadow.

“You should come to my party tomorrow night,” I say as we lie upon towels, watching the sea spread out before us. “It’s for my birthday.”

“A birthday? Wow? You are getting to be an old man. And tomorrow you’ll be even older.”

“So it would seem.”

And the next day when Charlotte arrives, the party is in full swing. William and a few of his friends make use of the wide-open space of our new home by tumbling across the sprawl of our carpet. They perform summersaults, head stands, splits, and awkward rolls. “Ten,” someone yells out after William takes a dive. “That was definitely a ten.” Sean drags a speaker from my room into the den and, refusing to participate in the gymnastics, only puts his beer down to play air guitar to his favorite riffs.

Charlotte finds me on the back porch and kisses me as she wishes happy birthday. “Smell this,” she says loudly over my stereo playing in the background. She pulls a gardenia bloom from behind her back. The huge white petals fragrance heavily of summer—a sweet southern scent that can only be described as familiar and natural.

“That’s nice.”

Charlotte smells the flower again. “I got this for you. I thought you might like it. You can put it in your room or something. It’ll smell like that for a couple of days.”

I breathe it in again. “It will be better than all that incense I usually burn.” I take the gardenia, set it against the deck. “I’ll leave it here for now,” I tell Charlotte as we stand awkwardly for a few moments.

“Want some beer?” I ask.

Charlotte smirks. “Now you know I’m too young.” She flutters her eyelashes in mock-bashfulness as I stand there not knowing how to respond. “Oh, you’re so gullible. I’m only kidding. Sure I’ll have a beer.”