Forbidden: A Standalone (31 page)

These perceptions didn’t even have a foothold in my mind. I didn’t even think of them. I was in a now that was so short, I stopped wanting anything but to live. To get across, to get away.

Cars just stopped, once they could, and the air became thick with smoke and the smell of rubber.

“Fiona!” Deacon was getting closer, holding his hand up to a car on the fucking 405 and stopping it with his fucking will to make it stop for him, then loping toward me like he was just crossing La Brea with the light.

That was Deacon. And that power over people and physics was the biggest reason I’d given him control of my life. It turned me on.

It
had
turned me on.

A yellow Mazda lurched to a stop in front of me. A cab. The driver looked terrified, his brown eyes open to the size of doorknobs.

“Fiona!”

I’d somehow crossed three lanes of traffic, and Deacon was heading across lane number two.

I pointed at the guy driving the cab. “Can you take me to Holmby Hills?”

He didn’t answer. I reached for the back door, and it was unlocked.

“Hundred dollar tip if you get me out of here.”

He took off. I straightened myself as the knot of cars I’d tied up dissipated. Out the window, I saw a lady hold up a camera, taking a picture. And next to me sat a girl of about twenty, wearing makeup and a sparkly dress, two swaths of lipstick parted in surprise.

“Sorry,” I said, “he can drop you off first. And I’ll pay your fare.”

She lifted a camera and snapped a picture.

fiona

D
aisy asked me to autograph the back of a receipt she found in the bottom of her bag. I did it, leaving her a little note about how cool she was to share a cab with me.

“What’s it like? To be you?” she asked as she folded up her precious paper.

“Pretty cool. I guess. I don’t have anything to compare it to. You know, I got problems. Money’s just not one of them.”

“Yeah, you just got out of the”—she stopped herself and, whatever she was thinking, chose another word—“institution. Was it bad?”

“When they put you in isolation. That was bad. But otherwise, I guess it was all right.”

I could have told her plenty about the drugs and the shitty woman psychiatrist whose name I forgot. I could have told her about being tied down or about the cameras everywhere. But I didn’t know her, and all that seemed way too personal.

A voicemail came in from Karen. I listened to it while Daisy told me about her life.

Me and Arrow are going to Baby’s if you want to join. You should. We’ve been locked up too long.

“I like being by myself,” Daisy said. Behind her, box stores turned into cityscape as we zipped along the 405. “My mom is always on me to get another job. She has diabetes, so she can’t work, and I have to drive her to dialysis clinic three times a week.” I must have made a face or put on an expression that asked the question in my head, because she rolled her eyes. “Right, I’m in the back of a cab because I missed a payment and blah blah. I hate banks.”

She made a little nervous laugh I hadn’t heard until then, but once I noticed it, I realized she’d been tittering the whole time.

“So I take the bus, but if I make enough in tips, I pick up a cab home because the bus at night isn’t really cool.”

I almost told her I’d never actually ridden a bus, but I caught the words before they left my mouth.

“So you’re headed home?” I asked.

“Yeah. Carthay Circle. I think wherever you’re going is closer, so if you want to get dropped first…”

“It’s Saturday.” I said it as if every assumption should be obvious. The rest of the world partied harder on Saturday. Every day was more or less the same to me, but she must have adhered to the rules of normal people.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Aren’t you going out?”

“No.” She didn’t look happy about it. She looked kind of down and lonely.

“I have an idea.” I leaned over the front seat. The driver made eye contact with me in the rearview. “What’s your name?”

“Basham.”

“Basham, can you get off on Sunset? We’re going to Holmby Hills.”

fiona

S
ome things never changed. Parties always had the same ingredients: People. A pool. Music. Drinks. Drugs. Maybe some food. A few dozen people in white shirts picking up empties. Big Samoan guys frowning in the corners. Because you could get wild in the house, but you couldn’t destroy the house. That cost money.

I lost track of Daisy sometime around my fourth Mojito High, which looked just like a mojito, but had pot leaves instead of mint leaves. I saw her by the pool with a drink, talking to Ivan.

My pager buzzed.

—Where are you?—

Deacon. Again. It was the seventh page like that. Just a question he felt entitled to ask.

Fuck his entitlement. Fuck his rules and his control.

“Fiona!” Jack called. “You have got to try this.” He was still a nerd but a useful one, so the former Carlton Prep kids let him hang around their parties.

He crouched by a small mid-century table littered with sticks and flowers. A pile of what looked like mud sat in a saucer. Onna Michaels sat across from him, pinching her lower lip.

“My chin tingles,” she said after Jack and I hugged.

“Give it a minute to travel down,” he said, knee bumping like a jackhammer.

“What is it?” I said.

“
Catha edulis
hybrid with
ricinus communis
I was working on before I got stashed in the pokey. Concentrated it down in rubbing alcohol. Delivery method needs a little work. You tuck it between your cheek and gum. Calling it TarBaby.” He pinched the mud, extracting a bit and bouncing his hand above the pile to loosen some black, fibrous strands. He held it up to me.

“Dude,” I said, “I’m not your guinea pig. I gotta see what it does first.”

“Gets you fucked up.” He tucked the pinch into the front bottom fold of his mouth.

“Oh, man,” Onna said. Her eyes rolled up, flicking and blinking to white. “Ah, that’s good.”

Gerald, another Carlton nerd who grew up muscular and fuckable, stuck his finger against his lower gum and said around it, “You found the key to the kingdom, Jack.”

“Yeah,” Onna groaned.

“When did you get out?” I asked.

“Week slash ten days,” Jack answered. “Something like that. I’m thinking of going back in. There’s a real market for this shit in the bunkhouse.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Chilton deals, but delivery is always a problem. He’s paid off just about everyone who matters, but that front door’s the toughest. He promised cash up front. He lets inmates pay him in trade. Girls and boys. He doesn’t even care.”

“He’s sick.”

Jack raised his eyebrow. “You some kinda homophobe?”

“You invent a new drug to sell to mental patients who pay in sex, and you’re offended that I’m homophobic? Seriously? Warren’s a sick fuck. Period.”

But the argument was over. Jack’s lips had gone slack and his eyes were half closed, revealing only white. He scratched his chin. Onna was welting her face and close to drawing blood.

Everyone in Westonwood would be walking around looking like they’d stuck their face in a shredder.

Yeah. The delivery system needed work.

I went out to the pool and nearly crashed into Karen.

I hadn’t even seen her until then. Either she was too skinny or she had been busy in one of the bedrooms. But I squeezed her so tightly I could practically touch my opposite shoulders.

“How are you?” I asked, too excited for an answer. “You look great!”

She didn’t. She looked like a fork. I was projecting my joy onto her.

“Staying at their place.” She rolled her eyes. I knew she meant her parents. “Her and Dad can’t decide where to take me. Dad thinks south of France and I’ll eat because ‘French food.’ Mom says Aspen, because she wants to ski with her little drunk friends. They don’t even ask me where I want to go.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Figure it out, and we’ll go together.”

She smiled. “Yeah. I like that.”

I kissed her cheek and we walked deeper out back.

Baby and Arrow were at a bank of couches with a bunch of other actors and industry douches. I found a spot and wedged myself in, joining the conversation about how long a guy’s goatee should be.

I took a hit from the crystal bong going around. It was filled with straight Tennessee moonshine acquired from a busboy at Victoria’s dad’s restaurant. He supposedly had a still in his driveway. The shit tasted like tomato juice and rubbing alcohol, so we’d put it in the bong and smoked ecstasy-laced hash through it. The high was like a knife made of ice. It stabbed me in the spine and melted like cold water in my gut.

From the poolside couch, I entered another plane.

There was me.

And the Everything.

And the Everything pressed against me, hugging me.

I was safe in the Everything. Bound to it. When I shifted my body, it followed, molding to my movements, my dancing, my laughter, absorbing sound like a vacuum—a clear jelly mass nothing could penetrate. Not Arrow, who was kissing me with lips a million women died for. Not Derek, whose hands pressed my belly to him when we danced.

The Everything said it was okay to let them inside. I wasn’t aroused. Not physically. I was just encased in joy and well-being and fucking was going to happen. Arrow, who had smoked from the same bong, carried me to a couch, legs wrapped around his hips. I was just starting to feel my feet. The Everything had released them first.

“Where’s the bong?” I said.

Derek swirled the resin-brown moonshine. Arrow pulled a baggie from his pocket and tossed it to Derek. The music had started to cut through the gel of my awareness. I hated this song.

“What’s in this?” Derek asked.

“It’s vanilla. All I got.” He looked down at me. His dick wasn’t out yet, but it was on its way. “You in, Fee-Fie-Fo-Fum?”

“Let me get another hit.”

“This stuff smells like asshole,” Derek said, warming the bowl.

His voice grated on me, and the light from his Bic was too high and bright.

“See what Baby’s got,” Arrow said.

Baby Chilton turned around in her seat. Her turquoise hair was crimped, and her sunglasses were still on her head even though it was after midnight. She wasn’t wearing a shirt, and her tits hung like silicone volleyballs in plastic bags. She’d had them done so many times, the guys said they could bite her nipples as hard as they wanted. She couldn’t feel them anymore.

“I’m out,” she said, turning to face us. “Holy shit! Fiona! When did you get here?”

She leaned over to hug me and landed on me before I could get up. She showered me with kisses, so I gave her a little tongue and a cheer went up. She got off me, and we sat.

Daisy stood nearby.

“You all right there, Daisy?” I asked, yanking my underwear from around my ankle. I thought I was supposed to be fucking someone, but I forgot to want it any more.

“Yeah!” she said enthusiastically. Good. Her drink was full, and she was smiling. That was all I needed to see.

“Give the new girl a hit,” I said after I took mine.

Derek handed Daisy the bong. “Bowl’s ash. Pack it or drink it.”

“Shut the fuck up, Derek. You pack it.” Fuck him. “She doesn’t have shit. Your parents coproduce money-spitting Oscar bait every two years.”

“I’m tapped, Fee-Fie.” He put his hand on my knee. “You got some nuthouse shit you wanna share?”

“Can’t smoke what I got.”

“Oh my God!” Baby exclaimed. “I forgot to ask. Did you see my brother in there?”

Warren.

Her brother.

The hit I’d just taken went sour. My mouth tasted like the bottom of a foot. I wanted to go home.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How was he?”

“Asshole as ever.”

She snorted and lit a cigarette. A flake of ash fell on her left tit. She saw it and brushed it away. “They’re talking about letting him out. Finally.”

I had my phone out while she was talking about Warren getting out and the sick party that would commence. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Sure, there would be a party and I’d be invited, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t have to go. I could avoid him. It wasn’t that hard.

Especially if I lived with Deacon.

My hands shook. I felt trapped in a matchbox. I held the phone to my face but didn’t even know who to call for a rescue. My brain was stone soup. I knew there was an order to how to use the phone. This, then that, then the other, but I felt desperate and couldn’t find the right little grey buttons.

Breathe breathe.

Home button > green call button > code > contacts > Elliot Chapman

Now what?

I couldn’t just casually ask if Warren was getting out without raising a flag. And hadn’t I just told Elliot I loved him? Where was that fucking bong?

I stared at the phone. It was one in the morning. He’d be asleep. I didn’t know where he lived. Lucky him.

I navigated to his number and hit SEND.

I wasn’t even sorry in a way that necessitated an apology. I was saying I was sorry to myself.

Red button. Call ended.

“Drink it or pack it,” Derek said from my right as Daisy still held the bong. He was so handsome, and his real-life persona was exactly the same as his reality-TV persona. Arrogant Hollywood douchebag. That was his brand.

I’d forgotten that I was about to fuck Arrow. I glanced at Arrow, who was chatting up Winny Sanchez. His hand was halfway up her skirt. We both forgot. That’s how meaningful it all was.

Elliot called back. His name flashed on the screen with two options over the buttons.

Answer.

Ignore.

He’d answered. He’d gotten out of bed or rolled over and answered and missed the call and called back or whatever. He probably had crud in his eyes and hair all over the place. I wanted to stroke it back into place.

The song changed to one I liked, and I answered the phone.

“You called?” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“What are you wearing?” I purred or slurred. Maybe both.

He didn’t say anything right away. I didn’t like the silence. It was like having him watch what I was doing and shake his head with disapproval.