Debra Dean - Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories

The door behind me screeches and thuds shut. It's Pavel. I don't believe in luck; I believe that people get what they deserve. I say "pretty night" like an invitation, and smile. I'm not going anywhere, got no plans. I brush an imaginary hair away from my cheek. His eyes dart back and forth, then he grabs my elbow and yanks me down a step, out of the light.

(His handsome features betrayed no emotion, but something in his manner hinted at danger.)

He says, "Let's go for a walk." I'll admit this is easier than I'd expected.

We slip around the back side of the theater and walk past the loading dock, toward the sound of the ocean. At the far corner of the building, he slows his pace and then stops.

"Come here," he says. He pulls me through a thicket of bushes and presses my back against the concrete wall. I feel his hands push up under my T-shirt and knead my sunburned flesh. I whimper, but it sounds convincingly like passion.

(When they kissed, her blood rose like warm water over her head.)

I'm not about to get laid in the bushes, so I loosen his grip on my tits and pull away ever so slightly, catching my breath. "I like the way you walk."

"Okay, we'll walk. It's a good mile back to the motel. I've got a pint of scotch in my room."

"Don't you think they'll miss us?" Like I care.

"I told them I had to get back and call home."

The dead palm fronds that litter the sidewalk rustle like paper in the warm breeze. Between blinding sweeps of headlights, the sky is black overhead and dusty with stars. I'm feeling helium-light, my feet almost skipping. I kick at an empty beer can, sending it clattering on ahead. I want to throw out my arms and twirl, to make the stars spin.

(He swept her up in his strong arms. They whirled across the dance floor, and out onto the starlit balcony.)

You have to squint hard to endow the Sand Drift Motel with charm. It is a sagging pink stucco, parked on the main drag to pick off weary motorists. From a distance it looks vaguely festive, but up close the neon vacancy sign lurches drunkenly and the orange-lit plaster fountain is dry and caked with algae. When Pavel unlocks his door and snaps on the overhead light, any last fragments of illusion shrivel.

He quickly pulls shut the flimsy curtains. I make a bee-line for the ceramic lamp and then turn off the switch at the door. He is moving toward me, already fiddling with a button on his shirt. So I say, "How about that drink you promised me?" I don't like to be rushed.

I fetch two water glasses from the top of the toilet tank and unwrap them while he rummages through the suitcase spread open on one of the beds. I sit on the edge of the unmade bed and feign interest in a tourist guide put out by the local Chamber of Commerce. He fills my glass, stretches out next to me and we drink.

"Say something to me in Czech. "

He laughs. "Oh God, you're kidding. I don't speak a word. I mean, a phrase or two, but nothing…"

"Whatever."

"Whatever. Okay. ' Jdi do prdele.'"

"That's beautiful. What does it mean?"

"Fuck off.' All I can remember are the obscenities. The others are worse; my grandfather was a randy guy."

Pavel is off on some story his grandfather told him about a prostitute. I settle back against the headboard and drink steadily until my body feels boneless and airy. Through the open window, there is splashing in the pool. The curtains billow slightly, ballooning the faded cotton orchids and making the hula girls sway. I swallow another mouthful of the scotch and follow its heat threading down my middle, out my limbs.

My voice sounds far away. "Do you do this all the time?"

"He says this to a nine-year-old kid." Pavel is still rattling on about grandpa. "What's that?"

"Do you do this all the time? Seduce women up to your room."

"Oh." He smiles. "Only the beautiful ones."

"And have there been a lot of beautiful women?"

"Not like you."

I'm not beautiful, but it doesn't matter. We will pretend that I am. One arm slides around me and the other clicks off the lamp on the nightstand. Blue light from the pool ripples across the walls.

At first I watch myself from a distance, guiding my hands, tilting my throat back, scoring like music the gasps and the moans. But gradually I fall under the spell of my own acting or the rhythm of the act, it doesn't matter which. I have forgotten myself for a while.

(The passion they had hidden exploded like a volcano and swept them along in its current. She had never imagined it could feel like this.)

We lie in the blue shadows, stretched out across the rubble of chlorine-smelling sheets and gritty bits of sand. Pavel gets up and goes into the bathroom, and I can hear him taking a leak. When he comes back to the bed, he passes me his water glass with its half-inch of warm scotch and I drain it. I run my fingers across the mat of damp curls on his chest.

I turn my face away from his and let my eyes fill with water. I have landed more than one part because I can produce real tears on cue. If the scene is well written, it happens on its own, like stepping out of my life and becoming the vision. If not, I think of my mother backing the station wagon over our cat, Buster, when I was nine. Tonight I'm on a roll and the tears feel genuine.

I wait for Pavel to feel the silence in the room, and then I inhale jaggedly. He lifts my chin in his hand, turns my face toward his, and asks me what's the matter. Nothing, I tell him, but he persists. Finally I say, in a shattered whisper, that I'm afraid I could get too attached to him. He is surprised, but I can tell he doesn't doubt for a minute that this is possible. His drowsy eyes focus sharp, and tiny fissures crinkle across his brow.

It's risky to suggest consequences. They can panic, suddenly flash on the wife and kiddies back home and start backpedaling. On the other hand, feeling desired, even loved, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Who doesn't want that fantasy?

(He took her in his strong arms and whispered her name like a prayer. What they felt might be crazy, he said, but love was like that.)

"Well, I could get pretty attached to you, too. Especially if you keep doing that with your hand."

I'm drifting off when the phone rings, loud as an alarm. Pavel stretches out lazily for the receiver and cradles it against his shoulder while he lights a cigarette.

"No, I just walked in the door a few minutes ago." He snaps on the lamp, and I curl away from the light.

"Oh, not bad tonight. We had a full house. Pretty lively old farts, too. Better than the stiffs in Cleveland."

I draw a damp tangle of sheet up over my naked back and lie perfectly still. I'm listening for a nervous tremor or a false note in his voice, but it isn't there.

(He hated all this, the lies and deceptions. It tore him up inside to see her unhappy. But it would be different soon.)

"Well, maybe we should get somebody else to do it and deduct it from the rent. They've been dinking around…"

I lie there like a lump for a while, and then I go into the bathroom and sit. The John faces a mirror; in the fluorescent light my sunburn looks freshly slapped. My shoulders are starting to peel away in patches. I shift onto the tile floor. From this angle, the shower stall seems to tilt precariously over me. I count blooms of mildew up on the ceiling. The sickening light and the glare off the white tiles remind me of the places they put nutcases.

I tell myself that they're talking about plumbing, for God's sake, the kind of business you transact with a wife. This has nothing to do with me, with us. When he gets her off the phone, I'll suggest a dip in the pool.

(How could he forget that night in Sarasota when they swam naked and unashamed, watched only by the stars overhead?)