In Stereo Where Available (33 page)

He shook his head. “She told my friend she thought I was weird-looking.”

I frowned sympathetically. “That’s not true. I thought you looked great that night. The way you had your hair—it looked good. You should keep it like that.”

“You mean with the gel? It’s too much trouble. Anyway, I can’t get it to look right. My buddy’s girlfriend did it for me.”

“Oh, it’s easy. Do you have any around?”

He set his soda on the counter and gestured toward the hallway. “Yeah, in the bathroom.”

“Well, come here. I’ll show you. You’re probably just using too much.”

We walked down the hall to the bathroom, along with Empress Ming, who minced along next to Carter’s ankles. Carter found the tube of gel in the medicine cabinet and handed it to me.

“Good luck,” he said.

I hopped up to sit on the gold-flecked counter beside the sink and squirted a dot of gel into my palm. On my ring finger there was a pale indented line. I rubbed my hands together and tried not to think about it.

“Come here,” I said.

He stepped up to the counter, bumping against my knees. Empress Ming sniffed frantically at the bathroom rug, getting high on the smell of hair gel. I rubbed my hands through Carter’s thick hair until it spiked up in little clumps. Except for the dingy tan shirt, he looked just like he had at the club. I was impressed with my work.

He looked at himself in the mirror over my shoulder. “Not bad.”

“Not bad at all. See what a difference it makes?”

“You really think so?”

“I sure do. You should let me take a picture of you like that so you can put it up on Kismet. You’ll be fighting the women off with a stick.”

He laughed. “I don’t really see that happening.”

I wiped my sticky hands against my thighs. “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

He smirked and slipped his hand around my waist, sliding me closer to him. My knees moved apart, the insides of my thighs touching his hips. I caught my breath as his other hand went up into my hair, turning my face toward his. If he had looked into my eyes he would have seen my surprise, but he wasn’t looking at my eyes at all. He was looking at my mouth.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said quietly.

He closed his eyes and I did, too—whether out of anticipation or fear, I wasn’t sure. His lips brushed softly against mine, and then, abruptly, he jerked his head back and let out a yell.

“Ow,” he called. Empress Ming’s collar jingled as she hopped backward from his ankle. A thin trickle of blood ran down across his foot. “Damn it.
No
. Empress,
sit. No
.”

I dropped my head back and stared at the ceiling. “Damn dog,” I grumbled.

“Hey, watch your mouth.”

I looked at him sharply. “What did you just say to me?”

“I said, watch your mouth. Don’t talk to my dog like that.”

“Excuse me?”

He pulled a drawer open and took out a cotton ball. “It’s just her protective instinct. It’s
her
house, remember?”

I hopped down from the counter. “Oh, sorry,” I snapped. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

He dabbed at his ankle with the cotton ball and rubbed Empress Ming’s neck. “I think she hit bone that time. I hope she didn’t hurt her teeth.”

I brushed past him as he pulled the dog’s lips back, examining her mouth. She looked up at me, grinning like the Big Bad Wolf.

“Nice knowing you, Carter,” I said. “It’s been real.”

His reply was belated and distant, coming from the bathroom as I stepped over the chew toys in my path.

“Seeya,” he called distractedly.

I showed up at the door of my former apartment with my old grad-school backpack heavy on my shoulders and my ski jacket zipped all the way up to my scarf. My bangs stuck out from beneath my winter hat, snappy with static electricity. Lauren answered the door in a too-short T-shirt and pajama pants.

“When did you get your belly button pierced?” I asked immediately.

She looked at me like I was one of the Ghosts of Christmas Past materializing at the foot of her bed. “What are
you
doing here?”

“
That’s
a nice welcome-home.”

“No, no. I mean, come on in.” She whisked me inside and gave the hallway a quick check before closing the door behind her. The first thing I noticed was a Playstation beneath the TV—that was new—and then, in the corner, boxes and boxes of records and a few crates of CDs stacked beside them. Next to Lauren’s teal hand weights was a set of plain black ones about four times their size. As if on cue, Prabath stuck his head around the corner from the kitchen and waved. His hair was slicked-back and shiny, like he’d just gotten out of the shower.

“Hi, Phoebe.”

“How’s it going, Prabath?” I dropped my backpack heavily to the floor.

Lauren stood with her hands on her hips, looking at me warily through her clunky glasses. “Everything okay with Jerry?”

“Could be better.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You think we could talk for a minute?” I threw a pointed glance at Prabath.

“Yeah, sure. Sure. Just come on back to the bedroom.”

I followed her down the hall. My old bedroom was empty except for my stripped-down bed, which I’d left behind, and a bunch of stereo equipment strewn all over the floor. We stepped into Lauren’s room and she closed the door snugly. Lauren had always been a slob, but now the room was twice as messy with Prabath’s T-shirts and cast-off boxer shorts, Beastie Boys CDs, and anime cartoon sketches taped to the wall.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I sat down on her bed and crossed my legs in front of me. “Jerry had a surprise for me.”

“Oh, no. I knew this was coming.”

“I know you did. You warned me and I didn’t listen.”

“You looked in his cookies, didn’t you.”

I peered at her in confusion. “What?”

“On his computer. Guys will usually remember to clear out the Internet history, but then if you look in the cookie file, you’ll find out they’ve been hanging out at every porn site they can get their hands on.”

“Oh. Probably, but no, that wasn’t the surprise. You’re on the right track, but it’s a lot worse than that.”

She sat down backwards in her computer chair and scooted toward me. “Come on. Out with it.”

I frowned and looked over her shoulder, where her calendar hung on the wall. Instead of the squares being inked-up with men’s names, they said things like “Moby Concert—9:30 Club” and “meet @ Bennigan’s 4:00.” The shock of Jerry’s confession had faded, but I still had to gather my courage to say it out loud to Lauren. It didn’t reflect well on me, that was for sure—either on my taste or on my judgment. I took a deep breath.

“He’s hired hookers,” I said. “And got arrested for it once.”

She whistled and sat back in her chair. “
That’s
a doozy.”

I lay back on her bed and rubbed my eyes. “But not for regular sex,” I added, with all the irony that Jerry’s reassurance had to offer. “Just for oral. I guess he’s too cheap to pay for the real thing.”

“He’s done this since he’s been with you?”

“No, before. Jerry wouldn’t cheat. He’s too attached to me.” I groaned and tucked my hands behind my head. “I’m
so
mad at him, Lauren. The whole time I’ve been with him he’s been giving me this sweet-talking sex-is-love routine, and now I find out it’s all an act. I feel like an idiot. And if you say ‘I told you so,’ I swear I’ll throw one of these Star Wars figures at you.”

“Hey, I’m as shocked as you are. I didn’t even realize Jerry had a libido. Last I heard, you guys were curling up in bed and playing Scrabble all weekend.”

“That was before I moved in with him. He’s got a sex drive like a teenaged boy.”

“And the same level of emotional maturity, apparently. How could he have been arrested? I looked him up way back in September. His record was clean.”

“They dropped the charges because he went to some sensitivity class for men who get caught with their pants down. So to speak.”

“Sheesh. Sounds like he needed it.”

“Yeah. Can I stay here tonight? My mother’s driving me crazy. She keeps telling me that all men are pigs and I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t even tell her what Jerry did—it’s just her catchall lecture about men. There’s only one TV, and my stepfather watches World War II shows on The History Channel all day long. And then it’s dinnertime—and Lauren, I swear my mother is the worst cook in the universe. I’m used to Jerry making these three-course meals out of his Emeril Lagasse cookbooks, and the stuff my mom does with boxed macaroni and cheese just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

“So you’re actually moving out?”

“Well, what am I supposed to do, move back in and pick up where we left off? Get back in bed with him? Since November I’ve been listening to him talk about
intimacy
when he’s really just describing a financial transaction. He’s screwed everything up. It’s over.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the one who lectured me that I needed to be more forgiving of men and their loser qualities. You see where it got me? The entire apartment’s been taken over with LPs and deejay equipment.”

“Yeah, I’m happy for you, really. Prabath’s a nice guy. I always thought you guys had some really good chemistry. But when I said you should be more forgiving, I was talking about things like video-game obsessions and tattoos. I didn’t mean actual issues with the guy’s character.”

“Oh, please. Don’t be melodramatic. It’s
sex
, Phoebe. Entire religions have been built off of trying to get people to control their sex drives. It’s not like Jerry’s the first one to get run over by his own hormones. They don’t call it the world’s oldest profession for nothing.”

I nodded. “So if you were in my shoes, you’d go back to him?”

She laughed. “Hell, no. Stay with a guy who feels like he’s entitled to what he wants out of women because he happened to be born male? Like he’s got some kind of a
right
to it, whether or not it’s freely offered. Last I heard, it was ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ There’s nothing in there about blow jobs.”

“Depends on how you define ‘happiness,’ I guess.”

“Yeah, well, I’d find myself a guy who doesn’t make me feel like dinner and a movie is a down payment. I’ve got a couple of guys I can set you up with, you know. One’s a pharmacist who lives about two minutes from here. He used to be in the Peace Corps, and he’s
cute
, Phoebe. He swims at the gym I go to.”

“Does he wear one of those weird little Speedo suits?”

“No, he wears trunks. He’s got a nice body. I see him a lot, for work. I can ask if you want me to.”

“If he’s so great, how come he’s single?”

“He’s divorced. No kids. His wife left him for a guy she met in a chat room.”

“That
sounds like baggage.”

“Like Jerry’s got any less.”

I sighed. “You’re right about that.”

Lauren stood up and regarded me sympathetically, her hands on her hips. Light from her bedside lamp reflected off her glasses. “Come on, I’ll help you make up your bed. I’m sorry for you, Fee, really. You see the best in people, and I admire that. But
every
guy’s got good qualities. It’s the scuzzy qualities that really make the difference. And then, it’s all in how they strike the balance.”

“I’m getting tired of telling you you’re right.”

She laughed and put out her hand to me. “Come on,
chica
. Let’s get a move on. Prabath needs to be at the club at eight.”

I spent the next hectic day finishing up the testing we’d been doing all week and thinking about everything Lauren had said. Just as I was cramming a box of standardized test papers into the backseat of my car, my phone rang. I assumed it would be Jerry, but when I flipped it open, a picture of Alexa was up on the screen. Relieved and slightly disappointed, I answered.

“What’s up, Lex?” I said flatly.

“Hey, Phoebe. I need you to come and get me from school.”

I drove my knee into the side of the box to make it fit and slammed the door. “For crying out loud, Alexa. I just got off work. Why can’t Dad come and get you?”

“He’s stuck in a meeting. And Mom’s phone is off. I got detention, and so I didn’t get to go home on the bus, and my stupid teacher made me miss the activity bus, and now I don’t have any way to get home.”