Sociopaths In Love (6 page)

What's going to happen?

Something terrible. Or
something fabulous. Or both. Did everything have to be either/or?
What if something was beautiful to her but terrible to the person
it happened to or somebody else? Was that good or bad? Was it
good
and
bad? Did
it just, in the grand scheme of things, even out? Was there even a
grand scheme of things? She doubted it. It was impossible to know
what another person felt. She could speculate and hypothesize, but
why waste the brain space? She was left with nothing to arrange her
perceptions of the world except the gauge of her own wants and
desires.
This
would make her happy.
This
would make her sad. But that only applied to
things happening to her. Another person's happiness would not make
her happy. Another person's sadness would not make her sad. She
opened the cooler and took out a couple of beers, swimming in icy
cold water. Something still held her back from buying into Walt's
philosophy completely. What was it? Compassion? Empathy? Were those
the same things? In order to take everything she wanted and do
everything she wanted to be happy, she felt like she would have to
lack compassion for the feelings and lives of others. It seemed an
impossible notion.

She tried to shake the thought away, at
least for now. In its current agitated and alcohol-muddled state,
it would be impossible to draw any kind of resolution from the
random thoughts she had. As if to prove her point, she reminded
herself what she had come into the barn for and that her mind had
led her into some kind of half-witted ethics class. A deep breath.
Beer. Dry paper. Get back to Dawn. Push everything else to the
black space of the cave. That was where thoughts like that were
supposed to hide. Nothing could hide under this fluorescent glare.
It shined the thoughts away. It had purpose. Like it dissected
everything and put it on display so you could see how useless it
was. It turned everything into a joke or a commodity or something.
A naked corpse and a BMW (probably stolen) became equal.

Deep breath.

She stared at one of the lights, let it
scrub her brain, listened to the buzz humming through her
bones.

Cradling both beers in her left arm, she
grabbed a thick newspaper and headed back outside. She walked in
the general direction she remembered until she heard Dawn moving
around and smelled the lighter fluid fumes.

As Erica approached the other girl, Dawn was
just finishing her cigarette. She took the last drag and tossed it
onto the glistening pile of furniture. A tower of flame quickly
ascended and the girls backed away. Everything was damp. The
rainwater hissed and the smoke was intense.

"Guess maybe we didn't need the paper," Dawn
said.

The fire was so hot they were able to sit on
the stumps arranged around the original fire pit. Erica spread
several sheets of the paper on the stumps before they sat down.

"Good call," Dawn said.

"Thanks."

From somewhere within all her black, Dawn
produced a joint and handed it to Erica.

"I like your makeup," Dawn said.

"Thanks. I like yours too."

"Can I kiss you?"

Erica thought about it. She'd never kissed a
girl before. The thought excited her. It excited her, possibly,
because she'd never done it before.

"Okay," she said. Walt had told her not to
say no. Told her he would not be possessive or jealous and,
besides, he'd probably never know about it.

Dawn moved in close and Erica felt like she
stepped into a room. Or maybe like the room stepped into her. Dawn
put a small, moist hand on either side of Erica's face. Erica was
shaking. The fire towered behind them and Dawn pressed more heat
into her face. Their lips touched and a shiver of excitement ran
through Erica. She thought of home. Of coming home. Some imaginary
home. Not the one she had left but some place filled with clean
linens and sunlight. Dawn pressed her tongue into Erica's mouth and
she tasted beer, smoke, and some essence she couldn't describe.
Their lips and tongues worked against each other, they went deeper
into each other, their small breasts pressed together.

Dawn quit and backed up a step.

"I should stop," she said.

Erica didn't want her to stop. She took a
second to find her voice and said, "That was nice."

"You've never kissed a girl before, have
you?"

"No."

"Now you have."

"I liked it."

"Maybe we'll do it again."

They sat down on the stumps. The fire's
smoke had died down and the orange flame looked more sharply
focused.

"Go ahead and light up," Dawn said.

Erica had forgotten about the joint.

She put it in her mouth, lit it, and passed
it to Dawn before exhaling and coughing. The joint went back and
forth, both of the girls silent, the crackling fire drowning out
all the other noises of the country night. When the joint got too
small to hold, Dawn flicked it toward the fire where it landed
considerably short.

"What do you know about Walt?" Erica
said.

"He's good looking."

"What else? I don't know anything about
him."

"Join the club."

"So nobody knows much about him?"

"None of us know much about any other one of
us."

"Except we can all do whatever we want."

"So you know about that."

"It's one of the only things Walt's told
me."

"It's like we're all reinvented and nobody
wants to talk about where they came from."

"But isn't that what people talk about?
Their pasts? What made them who they are? Crazy shit they did or
saw?"

Dawn was quiet for a moment, pulling out her
cigarettes and handing one to Erica. "Most people," she said.

"Back in the barn, all Walt and Blake talked
about were people they'd known and things they'd done. Although
. . . I can't remember anything specifically."

"Because they just make shit up. They've
never told me this specifically but I've been able to put it
together. One of them will say something and then they just riff
off each other. I think it's all fiction. I don't know how closely
you listened. I just tune most of it out now, but it usually just
ends up with them talking gibberish. Literally. Like not even the
words are important. So what do you think about what you've seen
here so far?"

Erica didn't really think she'd seen much
except for the barn.

"I'm not sure," she said.
"If you're talking about what's in the barn back there, I feel like
I should ask
you
how you feel about it. I imagine you're at least partially
responsible for some of it."

"Maybe. But it would be too hard to explain.
And I think it would be too hard for you to understand."

Erica felt like the other girl was talking
down to her. It made her feel childish and small. Maybe that's why
she said what she said next. Something to try and make Dawn feel
bad.

"When we first got here, Walt asked Shump if
you were his girl and he said you were all of theirs. Do you sleep
with all of them?"

"That's kind of two separate things you're
asking. First, I don't belong to any of them. I sleep with who I
want to and, yes, I've slept with all of them a number of times,
sometimes at the same time. So if you've never kissed a girl, I'm
guessing you've never had more than one guy at a time?"

"You're asking about my past. We don't talk
about our past."

Dawn smiled. "Good. You're learning." She
paused. "But, there's a first time for everything and if you'd ever
like to try it, tonight would be a really good night to start. I
could totally get off on watching them fuck you."

Who
were
these people?

"I feel like you all just talk in circles
. . . When you're not talking gibberish."

"How so? I just said I'd like to get off
while watching the Boys fuck you. I thought that seemed pretty
direct."

"Not that. Everything else. It's like
. . ."

"Religion?"

Erica thought about it but didn't say
anything.

"There really isn't much point in trying to
explain things," Dawn said. "What we have is a powerful gift. It's
going to take using that gift before you get comfortable with it.
And, by that point, you'll realize how useless it is trying to
explain it."

Lost in thought, Erica took an absent drag
from her cigarette. Aside from the things she'd seen in the short
time since hooking up with Walt, there was a bigger thing, a bigger
feeling that filled her with unease.

"I guess," she said, "what I'm wondering is
. . . do the people who have this gift only use it to do
terrible things?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Dead dogs. Dead people. Stolen goods. Do
you do things just because you can get away with it?"

"Yes. It serves the self. There is nothing
terrible about serving the self. Consider it the best way to avoid
failure."

"How so?"

"Most people who do 'good' things to help
other people are only doing those things to garner some kind of
adulation. So who the fuck cares? If Gandhi and Jesus were
interested in only doing good things you wouldn't know either of
their fucking names. They'd be anonymous. And what if they
performed their miracles or good deeds or whatever and no one paid
a bit of attention? Then they would have just been colossal
failures. Think about it. How many people get to do whatever the
hell they want? Not many. So, I guess, if you wanted, you could
live a life of deprivation but who the hell would choose that? Only
the type of person who gets off on being deprived. It's still that
person serving himself. Also, think about one of the reasons you're
able to do whatever you want. Maybe that explains why none of us
are particularly altruistic. We are who we are because we've been
largely ignored. You can't help people who don't want to be helped
so you might as well help yourself."

Erica watched the fire devour the wood, both
things beautiful and transient in their own way. Two things coming
together and making a utilitarian spectacle only to leave behind a
pile of ash to blow away in the wind or be beaten into the earth by
the rain. She started giggling, unable to stop herself. She'd
forgotten about the beer and reached down, opening one of the cans
and taking a long chug just so she'd have something in her mouth to
prevent the giggling fit from becoming an all out bout of lunatic
laughter. Dawn opened hers, stood up, walked over to Erica and
straddled her.

"I think you're way crazier than you think,"
Dawn said.

She kissed Erica's forehead on the
horizontal stripe.

"Not that I'm talking about my past or
anything . . ." Dawn said. "But I think you should try
this: Go to a store, take all the money from a cash register, take
that money to a homeless person or something. Maybe you won't even
be able to get his attention to give it to him. Maybe you could set
it down right in front of him and watch it all blow away. Maybe a
lot of us started out wanting to do good things. Maybe a lot of us
got tired of wasting our time."

Dawn lowered her head and kissed Erica
deeply, wrapping her damp arms around Erica's damp neck. For some
reason this felt like different friction than what she had
experienced with Walt.

The gravel of the driveway
crunched under a speeding car. Correction: a speeding
van
. Doors opened and
slammed shut. A high-pitched scream pierced the night.

The Boys were home.

Fun and Games

Dawn quickly slid off Erica like she was
afraid of being caught and both girls stood to watch a silhouetted
figure run toward them, the lights from the van shining in the
distance. The figure finally reached the light given off by the
fire and Erica was able to make out that it was a female. As she
charged even closer, Erica became pretty sure it was the waitress
from the cafe. She was nude and screaming as she charged toward
them.

The girl spotted Erica and Dawn.

"OH DEAR GOD YOU HAVE TO HELP ME! I DON'T
KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING! HELP ME!"

She clung to Erica's shoulders, shaking her
and screaming. She must have recognized Erica or, probably,
recognized the markings on her face.

"OH GOD! YOU'RE WITH HIM! YOU WERE WITH
HIM!"

Before even giving Erica the chance to help,
the girl ran off to Erica's right, farther away from the van and
the fire. Erica wondered if she was going to the house and couldn't
quite see the logic in that. Blind panic, maybe. Erica wasn't sure
she'd ever experienced that. Maybe it was refreshing.

The girl didn't make it to the house.

She had faded from sight. There was a sound
like someone punching an empty bag and the back yard was glowing
with the same clear blue light that had been in the barn. A bank of
floodlights hovered like a spaceship in the sky. Erica had to
shield her bleary eyes from it.

"You should see this," Dawn said.

Erica followed her.

The Boys were coming up behind them.

"Man, did you see that bitch go down!" Shump
shouted, excited, clapping his hands.

The rest of them, including Walt, were
smiling and laughing.

Now they all stood around the perimeter of a
hole in the ground. The waitress was at the bottom of the hole and
it took Erica's eyes a moment to adjust before she realized the
girl lay on some kind of dark green canvas tarp. Blake and the
other boys grabbed the edge of the tarp and began pulling it up.
The waitress tried to grab onto it but she wasn't functioning very
well and Erica thought about magicians pulling tablecloths out from
under dinnerware. The waitress clung to the tarp and tried riding
up the side of what Erica could now tell was an empty swimming
pool. She clung to it until she reached the edge and Blake stomped
her hands until she let go of the tarp and fell to the bottom. She
frantically searched around, probably for a ladder, but there
wasn't one in sight. The more Erica studied the concrete
depression, the more she realized it may not be a pool but just
some pit made for the express purpose of torture. She hadn't seen a
lot of in-ground pools but thought most of them had a deep end and
a shallow end. This looked of a uniform depth Erica guessed was
easily ten to twelve feet. There were three oily shadows in the
distance that bled toward the waitress and Erica felt a prickly
sensation of primal fear and excitement. She was pretty sure they
were snakes.