Justin Taylor - Flings - Stories

“Thanks,” Sandra says, “but not for years now. Getting up there, you know?” Shit. Is that a dig on what you said before? “But if I know Candi here—”

“What was your name again?” Candi asks you. “I’m sorry, I’m a little jostled. I mean—”

“Yeah,” you say. “Nobody likes to be slapped in the face.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Sandra says, which you’re pretty sure was meant for only you to hear, so you’re like, what, friends now? Trading digs on your other friends. OK. Or was it some sort of cryptic warning? (Though if it was a warning, it wasn’t all that cryptic.) Anyway Sandra’s off to make her rounds. She’s got her hair up. She even walks like a queen.

“So you were saying,” Candi says.

“Was I?”

She mimics your gesture from a moment ago, emphasizing the snort but skipping the wince.

“Gotcha.”

Well, you’re not gonna do it in front of everyone, and the line for the bathroom is backed up to the edge of the dance floor, so you suggest going downstairs, prop the front door with a rock or something, share a cig. You can bump off your keys when the street’s empty. Candi says, “That’s pretty ghetto, dude,” but in a kind of laughing way that suggests an additional, unspoken clause: But what do I care? So now you’re huddled in a recess between two buildings, not so much an alley as an alcove, a niche. So cold your fingers barely function, your breath and her breath rich white puffs melding into one cloud: there and gone and there again. “We’re all living in each other’s breath all the time,” you say, “only nobody thinks of it like that when they can’t see it.” A gentleman, you hold the bag for her and she takes the key. Her shoulders are bare. It’s a strapless dress, black. She’s shivering. At first you aren’t sure you see it, but there, in the casts of the streetlights — the fat flakes wink in the glow — it’s snowing. Wasn’t it supposed to be too cold to snow tonight? You’re at the point where pretty much anything seems like a sign. She’s beautiful, and everything else is, too. You lay a warming arm across her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here,” you say. But the coats, duh.

“You go up,” she says. “If I go it’ll be half an hour with good-byes.”

In the cab you kiss and pet a little and sip from a red plastic cup full of strong rum and Coke because you, when you were upstairs, had the good sense to make a drink. Candi, truth be told, is sort of gulping her share. You’re both imagining the city as a thing whizzing past you, rather than you through it, though the misconception is a moot point inasmuch as your cab is crawling through traffic, now stopping for a light. Why is this guy trying to go through Union Square? He should have gone west on Houston and taken 6th. Not worth getting into. Your hand riding up Candi’s thigh. She leans past you to reach for the party cup.

In the elevator your pupils get so dilated you can barely make each other out through the haze of glare. Your one-bedroom is tiny, but decent for Hell’s Kitchen. “Don’t turn the light on,” she says. She has this certainty about her that’s unnerving. She’s walking around your dark apartment like she’s been coming here for years.

She throws her bag next to the couch, coat on top of the bag, steps out of her heels. She’s walking toward the bath — no, bedroom. She’s got a hand behind her back, trying to get at the dress’s zipper. Shit, if this is how she wants it, well, OK. You take your shoes off, start pulling at your clothes as you walk after her. You drop your belt, decide you should hit the bathroom, pee, splash your face with cold water, lean down into the sink and guzzle. Then you give yourself a few quick strokes, just to check — not that you’re one of those guys with an, ahem, problem, but on a night like this it’s better to be sure. Anyway, it perks right up, so OK. Great. Sweet. Now save it for game time.

Candi hasn’t quite gotten the dress off. The bottom is hiked up to her waist, and the top is pulled halfway down her torso so her breasts are exposed. The Hula-Hoop: classic. She’s on her side, facing away from you. You lie down and spoon up to her, try to slip between her legs, but she won’t open, not even a little. Too soon? Never can tell what a woman will think is proper procedure. You grab a handful of breast.

What the hell is that?

It’s small, about the size of the first pad of your middle finger. A scab? No, it’s… squishy. In your mind you run through the old health-class list. Never heard of anything like this. A deformity? Some weird giant mole? OK. Shit. What do you do? Should you ask? Does it hurt her when you touch it? Doesn’t seem to. You should seriously stop touching it, though. You touch it again.

She’s sleeping of course. Has been since she hit the mattress. You’re getting that now. On top of everything else, you’re feeling up the passed-out girl. Man, this night.

You roll Candi over as gently as you can. The first thing you see — stomach plummet — is that whatever it is is black. And there’s one on each breast. For a second you’re sure it’s leprosy.

But the strapless dress — duh, you fucking asshole. It’s tape.

Sweet relief! Now with that settled, let’s get back to the issue. How can a person with all that coke in her system be sleeping? Hmm. Well, there’s how much she drank for one thing. Christ, these people and their lives. And if she was ready to pass out, what the hell did she agree to come over for? Caleb owes you big-time for this. Somehow, you feel, this is all your friend’s fault. And where is Caleb now? Probably at an after-hours dance club, making up with Lindsey. They’ll fuck at sunrise. He’ll pretend she’s Sandra.

You watch Candi sleep for a minute — kind of checking her out, kind of making sure she keeps breathing — then go into the living room. Snow’s still coming down out there. You remember that this meant something to you before, but now you can’t remember — can’t even guess — what it might have been. Like looking into a mirror and only seeing the mirror (cf. Peck to Bergman in Spellbound , which, duh, was what was screening at the party). Your eyes ache; your hands are shaking. You go to the hall closet and find yourself a blanket. It’s soft. You wrap yourself up, then hear your phone buzzing in the pocket of your pants, wherever you left those — the hallway. That’ll be Caleb wondering where you and the coke are at because he knows that with you holding the bag there’ll still be some left. Lucky sonofabitch is probably with Lindsey and Sandra. So you know what? Just this once, fuck him. You stretch out on the couch, struggle to push Caleb’s presumed ménage from your mind, then jerk off while thinking about Candi’s tits and what you saw and briefly groped of her legs and ass. Not your finest hour to be sure, but at least you’re not standing in there, mouth-breathing over her. You go into the bathroom, finish directly into the toilet, flush, collapse back to the couch, and fall quickly into deep but worthless sleep. When you wake up it’s the next day and she’s long, long gone.

Caleb finds Lindsey in the stairwell.

She starts to kiss him. He kisses back for a minute, then remembers how he promised himself he wouldn’t do this. Tonight is his night with Sandra. He extracts himself from Lindsey. There’s some crying but not much. Having slapped Candi, Lindsey feels like she’s made her point and could truthfully take or leave getting laid. Caleb’s good, but he’s also old news. She lets him go. He’s back inside, walking past a little cluster of people who are still talking about the slap.

“Yeah,” some guy is saying, “but crazy girls are a lot of fun.” Two of his buddies agree. The first guy makes an engine-growl noise, like vrrroww , i.e., sex stuff. One girl doesn’t think it’s funny. Her name is Amy, Caleb seems to know. “Crazy girls,” Amy says, “ruin things for everybody. Especially for not-crazy girls.”