Dirty Love (34 page)

Francis remembers the night was cold. There were dead leaves scattered over the sidewalk as he and George walked into the club. George handed his cashmere coat to the coat check girl, a ten between his fingers. It was understood this was a gratuity from both of them, and perhaps Francis had been feeling patronized once again as he followed his brother into the main barroom, the party having already arrived at its center, an assault of men cheering and whooping and applauding, cigar and cigarette smoke so thick Francis’s eyes began to water. The room was lit only by dim lights from beneath the bar that was empty because the crowd of Charlie’s friends, twenty or thirty of them, was gathered around the dance floor, young executives in ties and shirt sleeves holding drinks or bottles of beer or both, and at first Francis thought they were watching the flickering screen behind them, for on this screen a man’s erect penis was plunging in and out of a woman, and it was such a private sight that Francis couldn’t quite take it in and his eyes moved to the center of the floor where a young man in a dark suit sat in a chair, his pants and underwear around his ankles, a blond woman in shorts and heels kneeling there between his legs, her head bobbing up and down. Three or four feet away Francis’s nephew Charlie was hollering louder than the rest, his tie untied and hanging on either side of his unbuttoned shirt. He held a bottle of brandy and turned laughing at a big man to his right, and now George was nowhere Francis could see and he’d seen enough. On his way out he’d turned and looked back once more at that bright flickering screen just as the man began to ejaculate onto the woman’s belly, Triz in the Tiki light smiling up at him, the only woman Francis had ever done that to, all of his seed inside his wife for all of these years, and perhaps he’d taken a cab home that night, Francis does not remember, but there was the raw, skinned feel of some important barrier inside him having been kicked down, the sense that we are all ugly and that beauty is a respite and innocence is a lie.

Of course he never assumed Devy to be without any experience, though he’d not let himself think too much about that part of her life. It had been his failing as a teacher, too. So many girls over the years who would sexualize themselves just as soon as their bodies began to change. They wore makeup and low-cut shirts and tight jeans, and Francis saw the new power these girls held over the boys in class. It was like watching a child light a match and see that she was capable of starting a fire all by herself.

Rita Flaherty would take all this in and regularly depart from her lesson plan to talk about birth control and the risk of having a baby when you were still one yourself, the diseases you could catch and perhaps never cure. She would chastise Francis and their other colleagues for not doing the same. “Hell, I’ve given rubbers to some of these girls. You should too, Frank.”

But he hadn’t. Even to the boys, though he was happy to give out hallway advice about college or a practical choice of work after school and, once he was sober, he began to take more of an interest in any kid who showed signs he might be a drinker. But when it came to these young people and their sex lives, Francis preferred the natural generational wall between them to stay up, no windows or doors or ladders over to the other side.

Making any more pornos lately, honey?
Devon not being able to write. The way she walks with her head down and that music pounding in her head. How she spends so much time alone in her room, and when they eat dinners together at the table, how she eats quickly and makes conversation as if she’s pressed some automatic button inside her. How some nights while Francis reads the newspaper in his living room chair, Devy will sit on the couch where Beth used to read, and she’ll stare at the screen in her hand or thumb through one of Beth’s old
People
magazines, but it’s as if some timer is clicking away inside his niece for she’s only doing these things to be polite. So why has he felt even closer to her these past five months? Is it because she reminds him of himself when he was only a year or two older? Back from the other side of the world and a plunge into a way men should never be? That distance after? That wanting to be left the hell alone?

And perhaps this is what he should do. Just leave her alone. If she does not want the GED or a shot at college, why should he force her to? Francis passes the fire station on his right, the old folks’ home on his left, and his cheeks flush hot for while he does believe she should get that certificate he also knows the joy he’s taken in preparing those lessons for her. She’s made you useful again, hasn’t she, Francis? This young woman he now feels utterly incapable of helping in any way, Devy, who last night called herself Sarah to a boy on the screen.

Francis presses buttons and rolls up his windows. He drives slower. He is in no hurry to get back home. Through the trees the river shines under the sun, though he knows how dirty it is. Everyone knows how dirty it is.

H
ER MOTHER WANTED
to go shopping. She wanted to drive up to the outlet stores in Kittery, buy a blouse or something, maybe get an ice cream at the Ben and Jerry’s stand between the endless parking lot and the salt marsh. There are picnic tables under the sun where they’d sat before, but Devon just wanted to go home. She said that, too.

“Home?”

“I mean Uncle Francis’s.”

Her mother looked hurt, which was funny after what she said at breakfast. But Devon didn’t want to be at Francis’s either. She was going to wait for her mother to drive away, then she was going to put on her Dr. Dre’s and walk to the beach under the sun with her iEverything, find a place for herself between the boulevard and the water where she could stare at her screen and wait.

When Francis’s phone rang, she almost didn’t answer it, but the caller ID said
The Whaler
and she picked it up and got fucking Danny Sullivan on the other end. “My Sunday help called in sick, Dev. Do me this favor, all right?”

Devon wanted to ask if he’d called Paula, but she knew the answer already; Paula had a kid at home and Devon didn’t, and now she’s running the vacuum over the carpet in 106, Kurt Cobain screaming in her head, his voice beautiful though he’s trying to ruin it to make a point and right now she doesn’t want to ruin anything beautiful so she flicks to a new song. She gets that West Coast blonde singing how all she wants to do is have some fun, but that’s not right either. Devon stops vacuuming. She leans the handle against her hip and pulls her iEverything from her front pocket and flicks her finger over the glass till she gets something that’s not down but not up either. Irish rock and roll, the singer’s voice worried but hopeful, which is how she feels, so she turns it up, the guitar humming back and forth behind her eyes, drums like rising thunder. She scans for texts, but there are none, even from Sick, and she pushes her iEverything back into her front pants pocket and keeps vacuuming. Hollis is beginning to feel like only a dream she had, the respectful way he looked at her just a wish she had.

But it feels good to move her body and sweat a little and, unlike Paula, she gets down on her hands and knees and makes sure to reach the dust under the bed. Something big gets sucked into the beater bar. Devon can feel the high vibration of it in the handle, the singer singing how he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for, and Devon pulls the beater bar out from under the bed and there’s something red and made of cotton and she gets her fingers around it and yanks it out, the bar spinning again. A pair of thong underwear. Devon tosses them toward the closed door. She wipes her fingers on her knee and pushes the beater back under the bed and works it back and forth.

That picture of Amanda Salvi. She must’ve taken it herself because it was a side view to make her waist look smaller, her bare breasts bigger, the side of her ass naked too because she was wearing a thong just like the one Devon was going to throw in the trash. Salvi must’ve just sent it to her father’s phone because it came up as Devon was getting ready to punch in Bobby Connors’ number. Her iEverything was in the back of his car, Devon was sure, because she’d had it in her hand nodding off against Luke’s chest the night before, streetlights whizzing by outside.

On the radio the DJ was selling concert tickets or cars, and Bobby and Trina were fighting again, Trina bitching about something he said or did. She was always bitching at him. Devon was drunk, her eyes closed, and she wanted music and she’d come to hate Trina’s voice, a rusty razor thrown through something good. She was going on about Tracy Fields, how Bobby’s been texting her, Trina fucking knows he has. Bobby’s voice. One low grunt of denial here and there, the switching of radio stations till he got some hip-hop fuck music, a black woman’s street moans as she practically licked the microphone.

“
Bobby
, are you fucking
listening
to me?”

Trina’s jealousy was like a fever she could never get rid of, and until Sick, Devon had never understood it. And it was strange leaning into Luke because she hadn’t been this close to him in three years, not since that night in his boat. For five or six weeks that fall and early winter, people called them a couple. He texted her every day and she texted him back and on weekends they’d cruise around in Bobby’s Sentra with him and Trina. It was the closest Devon had felt to Trina since middle school. Their boyfriends were best friends, and now there was this glue between them and it smelled like Axe and denim and hair gel and cum.

The morning after Luke’s party and Luke’s boat, Devon had texted Trina before she even got out of bed.

I’m not an MV anymore.

No f-ing way!

Way

U swallow?

Y

U my gurl!

There was the feeling she’d put something important behind her and now she was somebody different: older, wiser, better. But that was like being at the beach and surfing your first wave, then standing there waist-deep in water thinking you were through now; how could she not have thought of all the waves that were coming one after the other without a break? She could have turned around and walked up onto the sand, but once you were in the water, it was hard to get out.

Just two days later, a Sunday afternoon, she was doing algebra homework at the dining room table, the drone of football announcers out in the living room. Her hungover father dozed in front of the TV, and her mother was baking lasagna in the kitchen, and Devon’s iEverything had vibrated on the table.

Go for a ride?

I’m doing homework.

Take a break.

A thinning of the blood in her fingers, a shiver across her face.

Ok.

So easy to leave the house. A smile at her mother, some line about Dunkin’s and she and her friend needing a coffee for homework.

“But we’re
eating
soon.”

“I know. I’ll be right back.”

From behind the wheel of his father’s Mercedes, Luke kept glancing at her as he drove. His hair was in a perfect flow across his forehead and he wore a new sweater and chewed wintergreen gum, and she felt bad that all she did was brush on some mascara and pull on a sweatshirt, her hair down around her shoulders. But he couldn’t stop looking at her face and smiling at her, smiling at her lips. Smiling at her mouth.

“I keep thinking about, you know—”

“Yeah.”

“The other night.”

Something like that, Devon can’t remember it all, only what his voice sounded like—high in his throat, almost scared—and she knew it was her doing that to him,
her
, this girl he had always ignored.

It was a day with no clouds, the sky so blue it was hard not to believe in something big behind it all. Then Luke was parking his dad’s Mercedes in a stretch of woods near the highway. Half the leaves were off the trees, and Devon could see through the trunks and branches all the cars rushing past, everybody in a hurry, even on a Sunday.

There was no kissing. No touching. But there was Luke’s face. His eyes dark with a need for her, his throat flushed pink, and when he put his hand on her shoulder, his fingers were trembling and how could she not use this power she’d been given? How could she not lean down and wait for him to unbutton and unzip his jeans, his soft grunts, his hand on her back like he was her patient and she was the only one who could cure him.

That calm in him after. The way he put on the radio and drove them down into Lafayette Square, the shy smile he gave her, his eyes grateful but distant too. At the Dunkin’s drive-up window, he ordered them two sweet coffees, and even though hers was too hot she sipped it right away.

When he dropped her off, he didn’t even put the car in park. He rested his hand on her knee, said, “That was awesome.”

“
You’re
awesome.” But stepping out of the car and walking back up to her house with her coffee, she knew she didn’t mean it.

On weekends he wanted to do more things. They’d be stretched out on a bed in the dark room of some party house, drunk voices on the other side of the door, and she’d let him get a finger inside her and it felt good but wrong too. He moved like a boy running down a field trying to hurl a ball into a net, the ball everything, and all that power she’d held over him seemed to leak out over grass, its center lost, and she’d pull his hand away and unzip his jeans and lower her face and mouth to what she knew would make the boy stop running and running and then she could just walk away and rinse her mouth and leave all the players and spectators with nothing to do because she was the main show, wasn’t she?

Except she wasn’t the only one who did this. So many girls had learned how to do this. Trina did it to Bobby (before she started doing all of it with him end of freshman year), Tracy Fields, with her thick red hair and crooked eyeteeth, her field hockey calves—she did it just to make boys go away. She did it the way some girls kissed.

Drunk together, Devon and Tracy in a bright kitchen drinking hard lemonade they’d spiked with vodka nips, Eddie Vedder howling through an electric rain out in the living room of so many wasted kids two lamps were already broken and a girl ran out crying and it was like storm clouds you ignore till it’s too late. Tracy was saying, “A tongue or a dick in your mouth, what’s the fucking difference? It’s not even
sex
. Sex is when you give them
this
.” Her fingers curled against Devon’s crotch and a laugh jumped out of her.