Tara Ison - Ball - Stories

He asks for the check he’s going to pay with her cash, although I’ve been thinking I’d like to order more, and at the same time asks the waitress to give his ticket to the valet. He likes the car out front when we leave, waiting for us, when his girlfriend is in town. This gives us more time to park someplace — I can’t exactly invite him back to my house. I’m still hungry, the sashimi didn’t fill, but I don’t want to be selfish about his time and I can’t stay out too late either, or I’ll just get hell. I gather my jacket, my purse, my copy of his treatment, and watch him count out twenties like playing cards.

Don’t you. . feel sort of funny? I ask, because I’ve always wanted to ask and right now I finally can’t bear not to, I feel too humiliated for him, sleeping with this woman old enough to be his mother, this woman who’s just using him.

About what?

Letting her support you.

You’re one to talk, he jeers. Still living at home.

Wait, I’m still going to school, I point out.

Yeah, and I’m still working on my script.

It’s completely different.

I know. Sweet deal you’ve got.

He thinks I’m spoiled, but I think it’s perfectly normal for people to live at home until they finish college.

It’s not that great, I tell him. Believe me, the second I graduate, I’m out of there.

Right. He looks at his watch. You’re probably at the library right now, huh? He winks at me, leaves with the groceries and stack of treatments, knowing I’ll follow. Knowing I’ll hurry.

We park on a side street and make love with the steering wheel jammed against my back. I look down to see where we’re joined, but the pleats of my skirt have fanned out over us. It’s my old plaid skirt from private school, my little-girl skirt, the shortest one I have. I move it aside to see, and my boyfriend palms then grips the insides of my thighs, digging in with his thumbs where it’s soft. He’s pushing hard, everywhere, and I start to come, and I think about the girlfriend’s little daughter. I hope she got a good dinner, too. I hope her father took her to a real restaurant, not fast food. Or that he made her something nutritious, balanced, all the basic food groups represented. The milk, the whole grains, a protein, a fruit. Organic.

I wonder if my boyfriend’s girlfriend ever questions how he spends her money, or what he does when she’s not in town. I’m coming and feeling bad for her, lying there tonight in all that pain and waiting for him to finish at the copy place. I wonder if tonight she’ll question why he smells of fish.

WHEN I GEThome, I hurry straight to my room, wary and quiet and carrying my shoes. I’d told my father I’d be studying for midterms at the library, I’d be home late. The first few years after my mother left, I was eight or nine, and we were left alone together, he was always so nervous, so worried. He wanted to do everything right, be the perfect parent. Make a good home for me, make sure all my needs were met, give me lots of quality time. He was always careful I was eating right and getting my vitamin C, No candy before dinner, baby, here’s an orange, and Finish your milk, okay? that he’d covered me tenderly and well in high-SPF sunscreen, that I had a full bath every night, Did you do your homework, don’t lie to me, now, that I brushed my teeth before bed. I was the first of my friends to get her bedroom all redone the way she wanted, to get her ears pierced, to get her own computer. He bought me a car when I was sixteen and gave me a credit card for gas. But he was so strict, suffocating, had all those rules, As long as you’re living in my house. ., I’m the parent, you’re the child. . or he’d get angry, grill me about where I’d be and with whom, Boys only want one thing. . , and always wait up for me, I want you home by eleven from now on, I want you to always tell me if anyone ever pressures you to do anything you don’t want. . But I realized it was just because he cared so much. He wanted to keep us close, connected. And I proved myself so trustworthy over the years, got such good grades, was such a good girl, did everything I was supposed to, that he finally relaxed and eased off. He pretty much lets me come and go as I please now, thank God, hardly ever questions me anymore.

Like tonight. His bedroom door is closed, the light is off, but I tiptoe anyway, tiptoe past in a nervous rush.

I promised my boyfriend I’d read his treatment when I got home, but I decide to read it tomorrow, when I’m clearheaded. Instead, I go online and bring up the girlfriend’s site.

I’m on vacation, my babies! it announces. But here are some favorites to keep you happy until I return!

Just for logging on as a Visiting Guest , I can see a gallery of still photos ( Freebies! ) and a five-second loop of flicking tongue, leather-strapped breasts, an open-thighed flash of groomed red pubic hair, vivid, moist-looking skinfolds. I look for staple scars or needle marks or lingering bruises from previous work. I think last time was the breast job. Not to make them larger, he’d told me; to make up for the breastfeeding, pick them up a little. She’d had her nipples regrafted and reangled higher. I look for tiny Frankensteinish stitches around the areola. I peer and try to zoom in on the stills, but I can’t get close enough. The upturned breasts look beautiful. She looks beautiful. It all must have hurt, but there’s no pain on her face. She looks much younger than how old I suspect she really is. I can’t imagine how the current brow lift can make her any better. I didn’t know she was a redhead. I wonder if the daughter has red hair like her mother, too young for armpit or pubic fuzz, sure, but sweet, long little-girl red hair, strawberry or ginger, always smelling of sunshine and sunscreen and soap.

It’s $21.95 a month to become a member, an Elite Guest , which allows me access to community chats and restricted live videos. An Exclusive Guest ($49.95 a month) gets personal, virtual shows and Very Personal, Very SPECIAL Hands-On QUALITY TIME! with her. I use my father’s Visa and sign up with what I think are masculine-sounding initials.

Thanks, honey ! comes up onscreen. When I’m Back In Town, You And I Will Spend Some Very, Very SPECIAL Hands-On QUALITY TIME Together! Meanwhile, You Be A Good Boy!

If my father notices the monthly charge on his Visa, I’ll tell him it’s an educational thing. An online listserve for research, or maybe a special kind of virtual tutoring. He’ll be happy I’m doing that, he’ll be very proud. I graduate next year, I’ll have to figure out what kind of lies to tell him then. I’ll need good lies, so he doesn’t worry, so he doesn’t get all upset.

THE TREATMENT FORmy boyfriend’s new script has story problems, all his friends except me seem to agree. Some holes, some loose ends, the inciting incident needs punching up, the second act drags. I thought it was wonderful, perfect, I told him I loved it just as it was. I always think his stories are amazing, but he never believes me, or he’s never satisfied. He went back to do more work on it for weeks and weeks, consumed and not seeing me, and finally finished what he now calls a ready-to-go-to-script treatment. Attached it to me in an e-mail: Can you read this asap, I need your feedback!? And take it to the copy place, make ten copies, please, please?? And come over to my place tonight, you pick up dinner, I’ll do hors d’oeuvres, I love you, yeah?

So? he asks. I’ve brought chili cheeseburgers from Tommy’s, his favorite; we’re eating them sitting on the carpeted floor of his studio apartment in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a converted garage, really; the actual house belongs to a ninety-six-year-old former bit player, who still lipsticks her mouth to look bee stung and uses his rent to buy food. There are green-furred oranges on the kitchenette counter and a white-furred heel of whole grain bread. We have old Variety s across our laps, under our burgers and microwaved mini-chimichangas and dim sum laid out on the abandoned screen door he uses as a coffee table. The only other place to sit is the double futon, but it’s lumpy, unmade, and unlaundered, and we’ll wind up there anyway.