Lauren Groff - Arcadia

When Bit turns to Helle, she is draped across the bed. He remembers the Indian spread from the Pink Piper long ago, but in the wedge of late, sickly sunset, the pinks and golds seem alive. Helle’s threadbare teeshirt goes transparent, and he can trace the slopes of her ribcage, the warm nestle of her belly button, the pointy bra that all women of Arcadia wear, a Dumpster full of them found outside a lingerie factory in Binghamton. The bow between the cups seems as delicate as a petal to Bit, as if it would fall off if touched.

She sees him looking. Come here, she says. He goes and lies in the dying light beside her. You have a girlfriend, Bit? she says. She smells like the vanilla the girls beg off the Bakery and dab at their wrists, napes, behind their ears.

No, he says. He is careful not to touch any part of her, even the fabric of her shirt. In profile, there are hollows under her cheekbones. She looks like the feral cat that haunts the Octagonal Barn: angular, hungry.

I had a boyfriend Outside, she says. He was forty. A bartender. Her smile is a private one. She says, He took care of me. She turns her head, and he can feel her breath against his cheek.

Did he know you’re only fifteen? Bit says.

She closes her eyes, turns her head away. Didn’t matter, she says.

He would lie like this forever. It doesn’t matter that they’re not touching. Her weight bends the mattress, her warmth radiates the length of his arm. She palms something and puts it in her mouth and swallows it. When she turns to him, she holds another pill in her hand, something red and white, and puts it gently between his lips.

Swallow, she whispers.

He holds the pill there between his lips for a long while, debating. When the first line appears between her eyebrows, he swallows the pill. She closes her eyes. Good Bit, she says, petting his arm.

He doesn’t know how long he is there with Helle; the window goes black. He watches her as she rests. Then her eyelids spring up when the door opens and the light goes on overhead. He feels a bad sickness stir at the roots of him.

What the? says the old familiar raspy voice; Handy is home. Oh. Helle, he says.

Handy puts down his guitar case in the closet and sits on the ladder-backed chair on the side of the room.

Heya, Little Bit, Handy says, nodding to him. May I ask what you two are doing in my room?

Helle struggles up, pulling at the hem of her teeshirt, her movements exaggeratedly slow. Handy, she says. Just relaxing.

You couldn’t find any other place in this big old barracks to relax, huh? he says. Like a common area? Like your own room?

He’s smiling, but his cheeks look too taut. If only Bit could find his tongue, he would be glad to tell Handy all about it.

Astrid let me come into your room whenever I wanted to, Helle says.

Astrid’s not here, Handy says. Did you ever imagine, Helle, that I might have had a visitor tonight?

We are your visitors, Helle says.

You know what I mean, Handy says.

I know what you mean, Helle says, and whatever drug had tarred her voice is gone: it is now the crispest thing in the world. She says, Fiona, right, Handy? I think that’s just sick. She’s like three years older than I am. You knew her when she was four.

She’s of age, Handy says. Not that it’s any of your business.

Oh, no, Helle says. It’s none of my business, even though you’re my dad. And Astrid is none of my business either, even though she’s my mom. Why she chose to open up the school all the way down in Tennessee way far away from you isn’t my business, clearly. Never, no, not at all. We don’t get involved in each other’s lives in the Friis family.

My private life is my own, Handy says, his voice gone steely. Just as yours is your own.

Right, Helle says. Exactly. I can fuck whoever I want and you wouldn’t care.

Feel free, Handy says. Just do it somewhere else.

Okay, Helle says. Maybe I will. How about Kaptain Amerika? He’s old and ugly and fried as hell. Our kids would have gills or something. Maybe I’ll go seduce, oh, I don’t know, Hiero. What would you think about that?

I would think it would be awfully strange if Hiero would succumb to your oh so evident charm, Handy says.

I get my charm from my dad, Helle says. Hiero will love it. Or, what about, let’s see. Bit right here. Little Bit. Sweet and gentle little Bit, the kid who you always liked more than all the other kids in Arcadia, or so you said over and over again in front of us when we were little. Over and over and over, That Bit Stone is plugged in to the Universe, man, she says in Handy’s voice, then turns, furiously, toward Bit. So, what do you think? Want to do the nasty?

Helle, come on, Handy says. That’s enough.

Helle? Bit says so quietly that he may have only said it inside his own mouth.

What’s enough, Handy? What’s enough? What’s wrong with Bit?

There’s nothing wrong with Bit, and you know it, Handy says. You just leave Little Bit alone and don’t get him all mixed up with your dramas, okay?

Yeah, Helle says. Great. I get it. Bit, who is no blood relation to you, sparks your protective fatherly gene. Magnificent.

She turns to Bit, snarling, and he doesn’t understand what is going on, or why she hates him so much right now. Helle? he says. She’s running headlong from the room. Handy leaps up and bars her way. They struggle in the doorway, and Handy jams his hand down into Helle’s right pocket, and pulls out a plastic bag. You little idiot, he says, releasing her into the common room, where she rubs her upper arm. Already, a bruise is forming on her white skin. Handy says, You thought you could steal from me. She backs out the door of the common room, keeping her eyes on her father’s face, and when she reaches the hallway door, she pulls another bag out of her left pocket.

Thanks for the treats, Daddy dearest, she says, shaking it like a bell. Then she’s gone.

Bit finds himself standing in the middle of Handy’s room, his whole world swimming up around him. Handy turns to Bit, his face red. They look at one another across the expanse, and Handy says, Listen, Little Bit. I know your pops and me aren’t getting along right now, though we used to be best friends, and that grieves me. But I like you for you. Some kids just have goodness deep down in them, gentle little souls. So you do me a favor and stay as far away from my daughter as you can. That girl is fucked in the head, I’m telling you. You hear me?

Yes, sir, Bit says; and now he is irrationally afraid that Handy is going to ask him about the plot of weed on the little island in the woods, that it is all going to spill out of his mouth and then Hannah and Abe and he will be thrown from Arcadia into the cold night. He steps around Handy, and when he comes back down to the Eatery to his friends, they are still playing with the bottle cap, waiting for him. They scan his face. He can see each one coming to the decision not to ask him what happened. In the long draw of last light across the Eatery, as the tables around them are scrubbed with white vinegar and only they are left in their island of four, flicking the bottle cap from one to another in silence, he is grateful, again, for the infinite generosity of boys.

At the midafternoon field break under the wild cherrywood trees, Bit sits listening to two of the Circenses Singers who went to the rally against nuclear armaments in Central Park. They are talking about how Springsteen was both electric and a throwback, how the taste of a hot dog with yellow mustard brought them close to tears. Bit feels ill at the thought of meat in his mouth. Someone is saying: . . the countries were like little boys standing in a pool of kerosene, bragging about how many matches they have in their hands. .