But the woman at the door was not Carrie Mary. I composed myself and received her in a manner I thought was perfectly casual. “How do you do? I’m Charles.” I was very high. Shirtless, I folded my arms across my belly like a straitjacket.
“He here?” she asked, seeming to notice neither my greatness nor my awkwardness. She was a local—long, dyed, purplish hair, big gray sweatshirt, tight jeans, dark lipstick, no coat on. She looked like the kind of girl who works at a Store 24 or some pizza parlor or bowling alley, takes a lot of flak from the patrons, eleventh-grade education. “Is MJ around?” she asked, sniffling from the cold. A chilling perfume, like vodka and honey, cut through the air. I thought I’d die.
“No,” I said. It seemed imperative that I come off casual. “Haven’t seen him.”
She bit her lips in disappointment, rubbed her hands together. I could see she was wearing a full face of makeup. Chalky powder caked over her cheeks, rouge, blue eye shadow. She looked young, twenty maybe. I tried to ask for her name.
“And to whom do I have the pleasure?” is what I said, and immediately I heard my voice echo through the trees like some nervous pervert or dweeb, like someone who’s never had a conversation before.
“Is he coming back soon?” she asked. “MJ?”
“Yes, MJ,” I said before I could even understand her question.
“Cool if I wait for him? My brother can’t pick me up till four.”
I nodded. She stepped closer to me, and for a moment I thought she wanted me to embrace her, so I lifted my arms awkwardly, then put them down. She was generous not to stare at my gut, my nipples.
“Can I come inside?” she asked.
“Sorry,” I said and turned to give her room to walk through the doorway. I don’t know why I kept up the lie about MJ. I certainly wasn’t in the mood to entertain this young woman, whose name I soon learned was Michelle, but spelled somehow with an x because, as she put it, her family was European. Perhaps somewhere in me I felt that keeping her company would be a further affront to my wife, which was the entire point of my trip, after all. I admit I was grateful to have something come in and disturb the journey of my thinking. The first thing she did was light a cigarette and pace around and point to the dildo and blow a ring of smoke and say to me, as though she were asking me the time of day, “You a fag?”
“No,” I replied, disgusted. And then for some reason—maybe I wanted to school her, blow her mind—I said, “I’m not a fag—I’m a homosexual.” I pronounced the word very carefully, elongating the vowels and punctuating the u, which I thought was a pretension quite in keeping with my statement.
“For real?” she said, flicking her cigarette and gazing down at my crotch. “How do you know MJ?” she asked. I put my shirt back on.
“A friend,” I said.
“What kind of friend?” she asked.
“A very dear friend,” I replied. The words just came out of me. I sat in the armchair and crossed my legs. Michelle seemed to read my mind and offered me a cigarette. She looked at me suspiciously. I smoked as faggily as I could, bringing the cigarette to my puckered lips, sucking my cheeks in, then flinging my arm out, hyperextending the elbow as I exhaled to the side. I had her fooled, I knew. I was like a purring cat.
“You come up here a lot?” she asked. “To see MJ?”
“From time to time,” I replied, swinging my foot. “When we can both get away.”
The girl kept sniffling. She threw her cigarette out the open door and closed it, went and knelt by the fire, warmed her hands.
“Where’d he go?” she asked. She was uneasy, but she wasn’t the type of girl to get offended. I was familiar with girls like her—tough, blue-collar teenagers. They were around when I was an undergrad, off campus. There was one like Michelle who worked as a bartender in a small pool hall my friends and I went to because we thought it was quaint. That girl was beautiful, could have been a movie star if she’d wanted to, but she just chewed gum and had dead eyes and seemed immune to all manner of flattery or abuse. That’s what Michelle was like. She seemed immune. And for that reason, I felt impelled to hurt her.
“He went out,” I said, “to buy a corkscrew.” I pointed to the Chateau Cheval Blanc on the floor next to my overnight bag.
She picked up the bottle, smeared her nose on her sleeve. She was pretty. A cold face with small features like a child’s, no wrinkles, no expression. She held the bottle by its neck and swung it around, squinted at the label. “You like wine?” she asked. She was being polite, making conversation. I was afraid she’d drop the bottle and break it. I tried to sound relaxed.
“I love wine. Red, white,” I said, “rose?.” I tried another word. “Blush.”
“MJ didn’t tell me you were going to be here,” she said, putting the wine down. “We’d had a time set and everything.” She shrugged, flipped her hair.
“He’ll be back,” I said. “We’ll sort it out.”
She nodded and sniffed and crossed her arms and looked down.
“Are you hungry?” I asked her. The second Whopper was still in the bag on the counter by the sink. I pointed.
“No, thanks,” she said.
“I’m a vegetarian myself,” I said. “MJ likes that kind of food.” I was feeling very clever, very bold. “That’s what I love about him—childish tastes.” With this statement I felt I had surpassed a misrepresentation and graduated to fraud, from novice to expert. “He just likes to play. Play and play. I suppose that’s what you two do together?”
She sat on the bed, folded her legs up Indian style. “We smoke,” she said. “Crystal?” She pulled a small glass pipe from her pocket, a crumpled ball of foil, displayed them to me on the palm of her hand like a fortune-teller or a blackjack dealer, then laid them on the blanket beside her.
“Aha,” I said. I must have looked like a grandfather to her. She was perched on the bed there like a bird, hair flipping magically with a flick of the wrist in the quivering light from the small window. We passed a minute or two of long, dramatic silence. I felt I was in the presence of some great power. Then it suddenly occurred to me that MJ might show up.
“Maybe I should go,” I said. “Leave you two to it.” She didn’t try to stop me. I collected my things. I put my boots on. But I couldn’t leave the girl in there alone. This was my cabin, after all. I sat back down. She looked at her phone for a while.