“All right,” she said. “I’m here.”
“Guess you might have wondered where I was,” he said. Wondered. The word was cruel in its understatement.
“How much?” She had to keep her mind on numbers or she would crumble.
“Huh?”
“The job,” she said. “How much?”
“Oh, enough,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll take you to dinner.”
The anger came quickly, and she imagined all the ways she would show him he could never do that again. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, the only thing she wanted to do was scream, and so she imagined that, her dark and screaming mouth a cave, with bats and bees and fire and bile spilling out and swirling around him until there was nothing left of him but sparks and dust.
And yet, suffering wasn’t meant to be seen. The most powerful thing she could do, the only way to hurt him, was to shrug and ignore him. She looked around the littered den she’d been living in and could see the suicidal state of her room like it belonged to somebody else. The few rays of light that eked between the curtains caught dust motes billowing.
It was a long, weary walk to the maid’s closet down the hall, but when she got there, she was able to pick the lock and found a three-gallon tub of cheese puffs. She sat with it between her legs and ate them, one orange ball at a time until she felt her strength return, then she sucked and chewed the cheese paste off her fingers and rolled the housekeeping cart down the covered walkway to her room.
She stripped the sheets, sallow and rank, the pillows dappled with dried tears and drool, and made the bed like Manny had taught her, with hospital corners so tight you needed two strong hands to undo them. After dousing a rag in ammonia, she scrubbed every hard surface in the room until it shone. With a big canister of Comet, she scoured away the water lines, the copper sediment, even cleaned the inside of the toilet tank, until the muscles in her arm felt like custard and the tank was better than new. She vacuumed the plush lilac carpet and opened all the windows to air out the stench of her misery. She could smell the damp stink of her body now, felt her scalp crawl with grease, tongued the gluey surface of her teeth. She showered with the little free soaps and shampoos and brushed her teeth till they bled and carved the grit from under her nails.
She could hear the suede crooning of a Willie Nelson song from an open window and suddenly remembered Dolly. She found her leaning in the closet, still cheerful as the cherry on an ice cream sundae. She lashed Dolly back to her rigging on the turntable and positioned the stylus. It was a happy room again, its freshness and color restored. Just the act of cleaning had lifted her spirits so much that she wondered if she had done it sooner things wouldn’t have gone so terribly south. She unscrewed a mini vodka she’d pocketed from the maid’s closet and drank it like water. I’ve been just fine without you, she told herself. Just fine.
Then she lathered her hands and worked the diamond ring over her knuckle with soap. She rinsed it of suds and admired the stone, a perfect frozen teardrop. Its value pulsed in her palm. She could sell it for thousands or sew it in the lining of her backpack for a rainy day, a little windfall, something just for her. As she turned the ring over in her palm, she knew the money didn’t matter. What she could not stomach was the thought that Manny would ever know how completely he had broken her by leaving, that she had gone after it and worn it like a comfort while he was gone. She pinched the golden band between two fingers, its facets spraying the room in tiny flecks of light, then dropped it in the toilet and flushed. This time, she did not go after it.
Kit awoke from deep, black sleep to the sound of the Mustang grumbling up to the motel. She heard him take the stairs by twos and walk right up to the door and pause. A minute went by. Then three. Was he having second thoughts? Did he know she was listening? If he turned around, would she go after him? No, she vowed. She would never chase him again. Ten minutes went by and an ill feeling at the back of her throat told her he wasn’t coming. All the flames and the bile and the bees gathered in her mouth and she threw off the sheets, launched for the door, swung it wide, and opened up her mouth to scream.
But she couldn’t, because there was Manny ramming into her, into the place the scream would have been. He clamped his hands over her cheeks and ears and sucked her mouth till it felt like her tongue was coming away at its root. It happened so quickly her only reaction was to fight, and she clawed at his neck and kneed at his groin. She let out a muffled “get off of me” one word at a time when she could break the suction from his mouth and finally pushed him off and caught her breath, and he let her.
He returned to her at half speed, distant behind the eyes, but driven. He took her by the waist and carefully rolled down her jeans like a woman removed her stockings, lowered her to the bed, and lay over her, breathing into the mess of her dark hair. He moved on her slowly, rhythmically. He had never come at her like this before. Sex had always been war, never soft, but piercing. A test. Now, she found that she could feel everything so acutely, every subtle movement, until a warming pleasure crested, then swelled again and again, each peak warmer and fuller than the last, and each time she thought they were done, there would be more heat and she’d hold him deeper, wrapped around all of him. She was so lost in the softness of the feeling, like their very cells were mingling and melding together, that she did not think to look for the signs that it was time to pull him away. By the time she noticed, when he rolled his head back so far it disappeared behind his neck, and his moans turned into ragged little breaths, and he held her hips to his like he was punching through her, she knew he had already come inside her.
She remembered Red’s warning. She had always been careful to pull him up and plant him in her mouth to finish, but tonight she wasn’t thinking. She left him sleeping and drew a bath in the goofy heart-shaped tub. While waiting for the tub to fill, she scooped out the dollop he’d left in her, wiped it on a tissue, and tossed it in the purple wicker trash can. She lowered herself into near-scalding water, swished her fingers around again to flush out any residue. She recalled the grainy silhouettes of tadpoles she’d seen in a science textbook, imagined them swimming in formation out of her, tails flicking, and almost smiled. He was back. A giddy relief, a feeling so profound it was religious, opened her heart and her senses. The chlorinated smell rising up from the water, the drip drip from the faucet, the chill on the parts of her body—head, shoulders, knees—that weren’t submerged. It was as if she were returning to the world after a long absence and everything was like new. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the plastic lip of the tub and breathed out.
Chapter Fourteen