Heartbreaker (14 page)

But when he is finished with the stones, when she has eased herself from the counter or the couch or the bed and he is waiting to be told what to do next, he wonders what they are: friends, or girlfriend and boyfriend, or something else? They don't go out to restaurants or bars or parties; he doesn't sleep over. She never comes to his apartment or gets into his car. He sees her at Beanie's, and he sees her here. That's it.

What they do—or, rather, what she does—is talk. She talks and talks, as soon as it is over, poking at her hair and smoking at the Formica table, drinking boxed wine with ice or diet soda or both, digging Corn Nuts from a bowl. Listening to her is the price of the pleasure he gets from the stones, and he submits to it, doglike, hunched on the hard seat.

In high school I fucked everyone, you know? she says, her voice mild, casual, smoke oozing from her mouth.

He blinks.

Not on purpose, she continues. It just kept happening. I mean, I was in a certain group and within that group everyone seemed to be doing that and I did it the most, I guess. She draws her good foot up on the table so she can pick a scab on her knee. The boys, they're sixteen. Next to them I'm a fucking fossil. You'd never guess I'm in my thirties.
Early
thirties. I see some girls I went to school with and I used to be so much prettier than them and now they don't even look me in the face. You know, the ones who never had kids.

She stops for a moment and stares at her cup, then drains it.

Nicole, he says.

Hm, she says, brushing ash into her hand.

What happened to your foot? he asks.

She pauses, forehead tucking into a deep frown. What?

Your foot.

An accident, she says, enunciating carefully, tipping the ash in her hand onto the floor. She lights another cigarette.

Were you drunk?

She inhales, holds the smoke in her lungs. They stare at each other, and then there is a sound outside, of the boys shuffling up the porch, and she sits up immediately, smashing her cigarette out against the table.

Hi? she calls, like a question, craning to look into the hall. The boys go straight to their room. Nicole stays tilted in the chair for a moment, the vein in her neck pulsing. For the first time he notices a scar on her forehead, a fine porcelain line beneath her bangs.

Well, she says, settling the chair back on all fours. She draws another cigarette from the pack, lights it.

*   *   *

He wonders if anyone else ever notices it, placed so precisely, every time, in the center of the gray concrete. He parks at the curb, picks up the stone, puts his hand on the side door, pushes it open. The house smells like Nicole and the boys: fruity perfume and cigarettes, sour clothes, the stench of fast food and fried meat from Beanie's. But beneath all this he smells something else, the smell that comes from touching her, a smell that doesn't belong only to Nicole anymore but to him now, too.

He hears water running in the bathroom; he knocks.

Kevin? she calls.

Yeah, he says into the door. He imagines her in the shower, behind the plastic curtain beaded with black mold, scrubbing her scars. He has never seen her naked, never touched her anywhere except that one place.

Just get yourself a drink or whatever, she tells him. I'll be right out.

He wanders into the kitchen, fills a cup with water from the sink, sits. Darkness presses up against the windows, nibbles the edges of the weak kitchen light. A lingerie catalogue sits on the table beneath a plate of dried eggs and he looks at the cover model's legs. A moment later he hears them, her sons, coming into the house, and he freezes.

In the kitchen they grab cans of beer—not Nicole's beer, she sticks to wine, but their beer, beer they have convinced their mother to buy or that she has supplied without being asked; one of her little gifts to them, along with the cigarettes, the convenience foods, the absence of a curfew. They take a pizza from a box in the fridge, twist the dial on the oven. As they suck the foam from the top of the cans, their eyes roam through the room and finally land on him.

Shit, man, Titty's here.

Again?
Dude, do you ever go home?

Nah, he's fucking Nic, like nonstop.

Ugh.

Fucking freak show, right? Gimp Nic and the Tit!

One of them imitates her shuffling step, leg turned in, arms flapping, eyes rolled up, while the other sticks his neck out and humps his brother's backside. They cry out in shattering falsettos; they grunt and slap and moan, they take turns playing Nicole, playing Kevin. It seems to go on and on, louder and louder, the big boys in their black clothes splashing through the room. Kevin shrinks against the wall. They crash into the kitchen chairs, knock their hips on the chrome edge of the table.

Stop, he says, stop it!

Their heads whip toward each other. It speaks! they crow.

You're disgusting, he whispers.

They laugh like they've been punched in the stomach.

What'd you say, Titty?

She's your mother.

So?

Where is your father? Kevin asks, glancing at them by accident. The boys stop laughing.

Our dad could kick your
ass
, they say.

But where is he? he repeats. The boys grunt, shout, shuffle, but they don't actually say anything. He stares at the brown door of the oven, where the pizza is dripping its cheese onto the red coils below the rack.

I think that's done, he says.

Asshole, they mutter, turning to pull the pizza from the oven with their bare hands, cursing as they attempt to shift the pizza to a plate before it buckles in half. As they slice the pie into pieces their mother walks in, bare-legged, scrubbing at her wet head with a towel.

Hey guys, she says. What're you making?

What's it look like, Nic.

She pinches Duncan's shoulder; the boy shrugs away.

I thought we could watch a movie later, she says.

They shake their heads, turning, plates of pizza pressed to their chests. We're going out.

But you just got back.

Things to do, Nic, they say, with big fake smiles. As they file past they look at Kevin, and their smiles harden.

Later, Titty.

The boys leave. Nicole finishes her hair, then goes to the oven, snapping the bake knob to Off.

Every time, she murmurs, and he can smell the cheese burning, can hear the boys laughing in the hall. She dips her head to wrap it into the towel, vertebrae spiking beneath the skin on her steam-flushed neck.

They're just kids, he says.

She turns, eyes wide. God, Kevin, I
know.

She drags her foot to the fridge, gets a bottle of diet cola, pours it over ice into a plastic cup, then adds wine. Sitting opposite him she sips, running her little finger in circles over the tabletop. There is nothing for him to do here except watch her. The front door slams. She lights a cigarette.

What were you guys talking about?

He shrugs.

Did they give you shit or what?

He shrugs again.

Don't just sit there, say something!

What do you want me to say? he says, and she slaps him. Before he can even feel the sting her hand leaves on his cheek she is on her feet.

I'm sorry, fuck, Kevin, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm like this, I really don't! she yelps, stubbing her cigarette out, her hand shaking as she begins clearing away the bags and empty cans that litter the tabletop. This place is a pit, she says, pulling the bin from beneath the sink. Can I make you a sandwich? Or we could order something. Chinese or whatever. I haven't eaten. I was waiting for the boys—

She's speaking to the garbage, trying to cram all the junk in. Duncan! Kenneth! she yells over her shoulder. Take this trash out now! I told you before!

They've gone out, Kevin reminds her.

She looks at him, mouth open, then turns back to the trash.

I'll take it, he says.

No, you—you don't have do anything, they should do it, I've told them to put this junk outside, I keep—she shoves again at the trash—telling them—

He gets up, lifts the can, takes it outside, dumps it into the bin. Bottles and cans crash atop more bottles and cans and the sound bounces away through the cul-de-sac, then rams back against him as he stands at the curb, his hands at the back of his hips, staring into the dark street; even though the streetlamp is out he can see all the little stones on the road. Rocks everywhere. He rolls one beneath the toe of his boot. He could get in his car and go home. He could turn off his phone, he could eat lunch somewhere else, he could stop coming to the driveway, to this house: that's what her men do, he guesses, they peel themselves away from her, they can't help it.

He stoops, picks up a rock. Puts it in his pocket.

*   *   *

In the morning he is still at her house, propped in a kitchen chair beside her bed, his head against the wall, mouth oozing saliva. She is sleeping, arm tossed high on the pillows. There is so much light coming in between the blinds on the windows he guesses it must be almost noon. He stands up carefully, his back sore, his stomach aching; they never did get any food last night, he'd just watched her drink and drink in the kitchen, and then he helped her to her room and she'd asked him to stay until she fell asleep. At the door he listens for the boys; their voices are barely audible, coming from somewhere outside. He goes to the hall bathroom; lifting the toilet seat he is met with a familiar film of piss on the porcelain. Afterward he looks for a toothbrush in the cabinet, but all he finds is an empty box of Band-Aids and several bottles of prescription pills. He reads the labels: her name, high dosages, pain. He closes the cabinet door, rinses his mouth with water from the tap.

When he returns to her room she is awake, sitting up and smiling, girlish, her cheek scarred by the crumpled sheet.

Hi, she says. Sorry. Were you in the chair all night?

He shrugs, drifting in the doorway. She wipes her fingers beneath her eyes, collecting bits of mascara. The bad foot seems especially naked against the bedspread and he imagines putting his hand over it, just to feel it, to be nice to it.

Do you want to lie down for a minute?

He clears his throat. I thought I might go, actually.

Just for a minute, she says, slapping a pillow into shape. It won't kill you.

He goes to the bed. Leaning to rummage in the nightstand drawer she withdraws a handful of stones and once he has them in his hand he feels better; this is their territory. She lies back and pushes her underwear down and he leans in, the rocks in his fist, his knuckles brushing against her thighs, stirring the flesh between her legs. He bows his head. He does it as slow as he can, pushing the rocks up and up, one after another, a slow liquid press; there are eight, nine stones, and he uses them all. She closes her eyes. He rests his chin against her raised knee, her wetness drooling over his fingers. When the last one is in, his hand feels light, too light; she ends up with everything, he thinks, but that is the way it is, this is her one consolation.

Swallowing, she opens her eyes, reaching for him.

Come on, she breathes, her hair brushing his face, her sour breath hot on the crown of his head. Don't you want it?

She unzips him, draws him through the slit in his boxers. He sees that he is half-hard, but his penis is like a plant stapled to his crotch; he hardly recognizes it.

Keep touching me, she insists, wedging herself beneath him. He fumbles between her legs, all grace between them gone. Here, she's saying, Here, here, but he doesn't know what
here
means; his erection wanders, knocking against her bony pelvis, the crepey skin of her stomach. Her hand is down there as well, fishing out the pieces of quartz; they make an obscene sound as they land on the disintegrating carpet. He remembers the boys in the kitchen, chanting
Gimp Nic and the Tit
; he squeezes his eyes shut and groans.

It's okay, she says, pulling his hip to hers. There's room. See?

She thrusts upward; the tip of his penis sinks inside her and he feels immediately how wrong it is. There is nowhere for him to go.

What are you doing? she demands as, withdrawing, he watches himself wilt against her thigh.

I'm sorry, he says.

She drops her head back to the pillow. Shit, she breathes. He's frozen over her, his arms aching, his legs, bound at the knees by his jeans, like a tail between her thighs.

Lie down, she says, and pushes on his back, right on the hump, until he collapses. In his mind he is cutting off every part of himself that is touching her. She plucks the sheet up to their waists, her bad foot jutting sideways beneath the cover. The light stripes the bed, bends over their bodies. His despair floats somewhere above his head; he could reach up and touch it.

Look, she says, gazing through the window at her boys swinging baseball bats against the trunk of the leafless oak tree. The sound is ceaseless, cruel:
whack-shatter, whack-shatter
, pieces of bark shooting all the way to the window.

They're gorgeous, she whispers.

Yes, he says. She turns her back to him. The boys laugh. Bark bullets the glass.

 

THE CHEAT

We met near the Dumpster. I was on hall duty, which meant emptying all the trash from the dorms and common rooms into black sacks and dragging them out to the bins behind the kitchen. I kept hearing this crunching sound and I thought one of the other kids had nabbed a bag of Fritos, but when I looked around the Dumpster there wasn't any kid and there weren't any Fritos.

Instead, he was there, crouched against the wall, half a rat in his mouth.
Crunch
went the rat bones.
Crack-crunch.
I stared. He ate everything, even the tail, jerking the body into his mouth with little tosses of his head. There wasn't a lot of blood and I never saw any guts or anything fall out of his mouth; in a way it was a lot more civilized than some of the kids tucking into a turkey burger on Cookout Night.