Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

“Here,” Devlin offers Rachel a drink. “It’s a Stoli-and-Diet.”

Rachel takes it and sniffs. Beside her, Mrs. Billingsley naps with her mouth open, gasping, as if she’s slept alone for years.

“That,” Devlin points at her mother, “is how you make a man fuck the nanny.”

“No shit,” Davenport says, tossing back the contents of her plastic tumbler and mixing another drink inside the bowels of her Italian purse. “And yet, they’re still together. Because Daddy likes consistency.”

“And Mommy likes money,” adds Devlin.

For an instant, things go quiet. As if an intentional moment of silence has been observed for decency’s death. Then Davenport belches, unblinking, and says to Rachel, “So, who did your dad leave your mom for? A babysitter? A secretary?”

“Don’t say it’s someone not young,” says Devlin. “Because that is the burn of the century.”

Rachel takes a taste of her drink. And then a second. She doesn’t dare say why her parents split. That it was her mother who left her father. That it was her father who left banking for stand-up comedy, because he deserved—his word— applause . That her father now lives in a basement apartment with a recliner and a hot plate and an iguana he agreed to housesit but somehow got stuck with. That her father spends his days making long lists of catch phrases he believes will get him discovered, revered, iconized: And that’s the long and short of it, folks! Trust me, ladies and gents, I’m an expert! And that’s what you call screwed, my friends!

“He banged my French tutor,” Rachel lies, having had neither French nor tutors. “She was twenty-three.”

Devlin whistles and clucks her tongue in mock judgment. Davenport shrugs. “I’ve heard worse,” she says. “At least he didn’t bang you.”

At that, Rachel finishes her drink. Davenport makes her another. Halfway through the third, despite her mother’s warning, Rachel gets out of her figurative wheelchair and asks for the animal crackers. Devlin and Davenport watch unblinking as Rachel eats an entire box and then a second.

“Damn, bitch,” Devlin says. “Save some for the Africans.”

Davenport doesn’t comment. She just stares at Rachel as Rachel eats, chews her lower lip as Rachel chews, and it occurs to Rachel, as the plane whirs on slow and rich, as the girls splay warm and drunk, that Davenport’s lower lip and Devlin’s fingernails are the way they are not because the girls are scared or bored, but because they’re starving.

Ass Island turns out to be a private slice of Caribbean land, shaped like a hand giving the finger. Devlin and Davenport, immune to its grandeur and that of their beach house, give Rachel a passionless tour upon landing.

“This is our room,” Davenport says. “We’ve got a view of the ocean, a view of the pool, a view of where Devlin screwed the gardener.”

“How do you know where I screwed the gardener?” Devlin asks.

“Because I was watching,” Davenport says.

Rachel sits on a bed while the sisters unpack by tipping their suitcases onto the floor of the closet. They each deposit a pile of silk dresses and sunglasses, bikinis and lighters, playing cards and menthol cigarettes, smashed shoes and loose Skittles. There’s a pink plastic case that Rachel guesses might hold a diaphragm. A carved wooden box that must be for weed. When they’re done, they take Rachel on a half-hearted tour of the shingled house and flowering grounds, pointing out useless things: not where Rachel can find an extra roll of toilet paper or a glass of water or a bottle of sunscreen, but where their father once had a seizure from too much cocaine, which window the islanders climb into when the Billingsleys aren’t there.

“See these shotgun shells?” Davenport says, opening a drawer intended for silverware. “They come here and do drug deals. They use this house as a hideout.”

“Just doing our part,” Devlin says.

“Community service,” Davenport agrees.

Rachel is too ravenous to be impressed; she cannot help but point to the refrigerator next. “Any diet soda in there?” she asks.

Davenport yanks it open to reveal a lone champagne cork and an old jar of cocktail sauce, then she turns, slow, and looks at Rachel. “Oh, shit,” she says. “You’re hungry again.”

Devlin opens her mouth in awe, then closes it like a fish.

Rachel lifts her shoulders, then drops them.

Davenport thinks with the refrigerator open. “If we take you somewhere, will you eat for us?”

Devlin releases a gasp. “Oh, please,” she whispers. “Pretty pretty?”

Rachel looks from one to the other. This is why she was invited, she sees. This is how to make them happy. “All right,” she says, nodding her plain, round face. “I can do that.”

At a restaurant meant for locals but appropriated by the sunburned, Rachel sits while Devlin and Davenport order for her: a double-bacon cheeseburger, a bowl of conch chowder, a plate of coconut macaroons.

“Get her a beer,” Devlin says. “Two.”

“God, beer,” Davenport says. “What I wouldn’t.”

Rachel watches them fight over the menu, as if they’ve never held one, as if it’s pornography, a love letter, a treasure map. The waiter lets them keep it to peruse, which they do, producing a pack of menthols while they read it, smoking as if they’ve just had sex. Rachel notices that the Caribbean sounds different from other oceans. It sounds like something Rachel knows, but cannot place.

“Jerk chicken,” Davenport says.

“Fucking potatoes,” Devlin adds.

When the food arrives, the sisters sit back and watch Rachel eat, their eyes glassy with booze and tears.

“Take it slow,” Davenport says.

So, Rachel does. She eats the burger as if it’s her first, the soup as if it’s her last. She pinches up each cookie with her soft, ringless fingers and holds them up for the girls to see, sugar in the sunlight. By the time the meal is over, Rachel feels the feeling of a job well done—one hundred stacks of counted checks. A layered pudding, well-layered.

“Take a bow,” Devlin says.

“No shit,” Davenport adds.

Rachel does not refuse. She brushes the crumbs from her lap and stands. She bows stage left. She bows stage right. She bows right down the center.

That night at the house, from their twin bamboo beds, the girls show Rachel how they entertain themselves without television.

“Things to smoke,” Devlin says, laying out cigarettes and joints like a picket fence on her bedspread.

“Things to drink,” Davenport says, placing a bottle of vodka next to a bottle of rum on the nightstand.

“And things to play,” Devlin says, thumping her skull as if she’s thinking up something good.

“Like what?” Rachel asks.

Devlin runs an unlit joint under her nose and inhales. “Sometimes Davenport and I pretend we’re regular people. That we’re not rich.”

“Yeah,” says Davenport. “We just lie here and say shit that rich people would never say.”

Rachel frowns. “Such as?”

Devlin licks the joint and smooths it, like a child’s cowlick. “Rachel can judge us,” she says to Davenport. “Rachel can tell us if we sound poor.”

“Oh, wow!” Davenport says, showing an emotion Rachel guessed her incapable of. An emotion Rachel feels compelled to nurture, to cup her hands around and blow on like an ember. “Would you?”

Rachel cannot imagine saying no. “Okay,” she says. “For Skittles.”

For a second, Davenport and Devlin further brighten, as if Rachel has offered to eat two slices of cake in front of them. “God, I love you,” Devlin says.