Beyond the Pale Motel (10 page)

“He is.”

“But you're in a vulnerable position with everything that's happened.” I was grateful to her for not saying Dash's name out loud. Or bringing up Michelle Babcock. “Well, if he calls you within the week and asks you to dinner, I think it's awesome, but if not, I think you should break it off.”

And that was what I did. He didn't call but he texted at seven forty-five the next Saturday night asking if he could come over.
Booty call,
I thought. I didn't reply. That night I dreamed that while I gave him head, on my hands and knees on the mattress, he slid his finger into my ass, pulling me back and pushing me forward like a sucking machine.

When Bree sent me a link to FU Cupid, I signed up.

*   *   *

I took Skylar to his game; I had made a pact with myself that my dalliance would never interfere with his happiness. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly work that way.

Maybe Skylar picked up the tension from me or maybe he was just having a bad day, but after he struck out the second time he hung his head and I knew he was crying as he ran to the dugout. In the next inning Jarell put him on third and he tagged a kid on the opposing team who was declared safe. It was hard to tell if the kid had really made it or not. Skylar was angry; I saw that clearly, though.

On his third at bat I held my breath, sick to my stomach, praying for him to at least make contact. I hadn't been praying enough lately, I realized. Might as well use one on my favorite person on the planet.

But he struck out again, and this time when he ran off, he was crying. I wanted so badly to go to him in the dugout, but I knew it was off-limits. Until Jarell signaled for me to come back there. I ran over. Jarell had taken Skylar out of the game, and they were standing by a fence a little way off. Skylar was staring at his cleats, face red, chest heaving as he tried to stifle sobs. His dusty black canvas bat bag lay in the dirt like a dead dog.

“Come here, Skylar,” Jarell said.

Sky kept his eyes on the ground and wouldn't budge.

“Over here. Right now. Are you afraid I'm gonna bite you?”

Sky shuddered. Tears sprang to my own eyes and I put my hand out to touch his shoulder, but Jarell waved at me to keep away. I obeyed him as diligently as I did in bed. It was like a dream where you can't move. What was wrong with me?

“Come on.” There was a hard edge in Jarell's voice now. No wonder I obeyed this man; that edge was always there, I realized, just below the surface. Still, I was the adult. I should say something.

But Skylar stepped forward.

“I can't have anyone crying like that on my team, young man.”

Skylar still wouldn't look up.

“Do you hear me? I can't have a crybaby on my team.”

This was too much. Sky's gaze shot up. In the liberal, loving world of his life grown-ups didn't call kids names.

“Don't call him that,” I said.

“Please stay out of this, Mom. Godmom. Whatever.”

“Come on, Sky.” I took his hand and handed him his bat bag.

“Crying does not have any purpose,” Jarell said. “It just shows your weakness to your enemy. And if you want to model tears and make, excuse me but, a lily-white mama's boy out of him, fine, it's your choice. But you both have some learning to do.”

I certainly did.
Don't sleep with the love-of-your-life godson's baseball coach. Especially if he proves to be a Manticore. Cry it out. Cry as much as you fucking want.

 

#6

 

I went on FU Cupid and found Carlton, a tall Canadian artist. Gave him four hearts. He hearted me back. We chatted and he e-mailed me a link to his website—large portraits that resembled religious medieval icons, made with tinted beeswax. Encaustic, it was called. He said they smelled like honey. That was enough for me to give him my number.

Carlton's voice was deep but somehow lilting. We decided to meet for coffee the next evening. Simple. Internet dating wasn't all that bad, I thought. And it was a good distraction from the dead girls now that Jarell was gone.

I met Carlton at Jack and the Bean. (When we were drinking, Bree and I used to joke that it was the wrong Jack, and we'd bring some of the right one to put in our coffee.) Carlton looked taller and thinner in person, dressed in a fawn-colored suede jacket, jeans, and heavy-soled brown leather shoes. He extended his hand to shake mine, quite formally, and we got iced coffee and sat outside on the sidewalk, breathing exhaust and watching the headlights of the cars curving away down the street.

He had a long face and a jagged nose, rather thin lips, but his eyes were pretty—round and hazel—if a bit myopic, behind his rectangular glasses.

“So how's this online thing been for you?” I said, not sure how else to start, since he hadn't yet.

“Strange. It hasn't worked out so far. One woman, she said I wasn't her type. But then we had so much in common and so she agreed to meet. She took one look at me and says, ‘This isn't going to work for me,' and leaves.”

“Oh, that's brutal. People are so brutal.” I really felt for him. But maybe brutal was too strong a word. Brutal was what had happened to Michelle Babcock and the others. I almost brought it up but decided not to.

“How about you?” he asked.

“This is my first coffee date and so far it's working for me.” His smile surprised me; it was warmer than I'd expected and erased thoughts of murder from my mind. “I like your paintings. I put a link to them on my blog.”

“Thank you. I'd like to see it. Is there a theme?”

“Things that make life bearable. It's called
Love Monster
.”

“I'm flattered to be included. Why
monster,
though?”

“It started because my friend and I categorized men we dated as different monsters. Ghouls, Manticores, Zombies…”

“What would I be?”

My turn to smile. I figured that even though he was an artist, his posture, his formality, and his full-time job qualified him as my very first Goblin. “But in a good way,” I added when I told him.

“I think I'd prefer Vampire, even though they've been done to death, no pun intended.”

“That, too. I'd say you're pretty elegant. And sexy.” As I said it, I felt my clit stir. We just stared at each other for a moment and I wondered if he was hard.

“Well, if I painted you, you'd be a Madonna.”

“Why's that?” I asked, thinking of the delicate portraits that smelled like honey. Once I'd read that some male artists imagined that they painted with their dicks.

“You have something very maternal about you. But also, if I may say so, quite sexy, too.” His eyes moved over my body, down to my feet, in open-toed wedges, where his glance lingered.

My face warmed and I was instantly wet. We talked more about art and his work as an animator. LA, music, film. The subject matter wasn't too personal, but the tone was pure pillow talk.

We went for drinks at Bar Wire in the lobby of the White Hotel, which had been built in the twenties and even after its remodel in the nineties was rumored to be haunted. In the dark room lit by red chandeliers he had a glass of wine and I had cranberry and soda. Leaned against the suede of his jacket. Hard to imagine it as once a live thing, violently skinned. It was so pretty.

“I like your jacket.” I felt drunk.

“I like your shoes.” That should have been a clue.

As he drank the wine, he smiled more and more, slid the hem of my thrift shop chain-link-print silk wrap dress up my thigh. The veins in his hands were big, which signified a strong blood flow. Tingles scurried across the back of my legs.

“I haven't done this before with someone I've just met, and I hope you won't be offended, but I was wondering if you wanted to get a room.”

There had been Jarell after Dash. Before Dash there had been others, more than was probably healthy for me. Every man I'd ever slept with, I had loved him in some way, found something to love about him. Not the men's strength as much as their vulnerability. Here was this one, rejected by some Internet bitch; he was a talented artist, soft-spoken, well dressed, articulate, sophisticated. “I haven't done this sober before, but yes.”

The disconcertingly charming smile again. “Meaning, gotten a room with someone, or gotten a room with someone you don't know?”

“The latter.”

“Are you sober? I mean, not just at the moment?”

I nodded.

“Yes? Cranberry and soda, eh? Good for you. I admire that discipline. How many years then?”

“Eleven.”

“How about we round up to twelve and mess around half an hour for each year of your sobriety, Miss Catt? What do you say?”

We went across the street and bought condoms at the drugstore, giddy as teenagers. He paid for the room and I draped my scarf over the lamp to soften the light. His body was pale, pristine, lean, and yoga-toned. He knew how to place his cock in just the right spot. It made the tears spring to my eyes, and I worried that I'd scare him away. But he pulled out only to lick me, then slipped back in and fucked me just as I was still coming from the oral. He got up to use the bathroom and came back and showed me that he was hard again, standing next to the bed, sticking straight out. I rolled the condom on and we did it once more.

“I could go for hours,” he said, and I thought of Jarell with a pang of longing that I was ashamed of. Not only because I missed him but because I was the one who had ultimately pushed him away. At least I wasn't thinking of Dash and the baby we would never have.
Don't think of Dash
. I gripped harder on to Carlton's lean torso and wept into his neck.

*   *   *

The next time we saw each other Carlton took me to a small, red-candle-lit restaurant in Venice. We sat in the window and ate white-bean hummus, spinach and baby shrimps on flatbread, and beet salad with feta cheese. When the waiter offered me wine, Carlton politely suggested pineapple-cucumber agua fresca. A dark-haired boy about Skylar's age stood in the window holding up hand-painted bangles and Carlton said, “I like his entrepreneurial spirit,” and got up to go outside and buy me one. He slid it over my hand, and the weight of the bangle felt reassuring on my arm. It was painted with pink peonies on a red background, much like the dress I'd worn the night Dash left me.

I noticed that Carlton dropped his napkin three times during dinner and seemed to pause before he retrieved it. Once he said, “Lovely polish,” about my toenails. “What's that color? Almost a pastel coral. It's really nice.” He grinned.

I figured painters like colors, right?

After dinner we wandered down the street, past shops full of expensively distressed jeans and furniture, mosaics made from broken china and figurines, hedgehog-shaped teapots, orchids in birdcages, and tattooed and hennaed mannequins. Everything you needed to live in Los Angeles. I snapped photos for my blog; things looked magical to me again. There was even a new age bookstore that sold crystals and tarot cards. Carlton took my hand, pulled me inside, and asked the nose-ringed guy at the desk about the psychic reading they advertised.

When Nose Ring confirmed that, yes, a psychic was in, Carlton asked me if I'd like to try, and I agreed. What could it hurt? No one was going to predict an early death or anything. Yes, I really thought that.

We entered a small room where a woman with red hair sat at a table. “I don't use any cards,” she said after we had introduced ourselves. “I go into a trance and speak to you about what I see. Sometimes I may make some odd sounds or gestures. Does that sound all right?”

We agreed. She seemed quite mild-mannered until she went “under.” Then she glared and barked at us like a dog. Carlton cringed, pushed his glasses back on his nose, and crossed his legs.

“You, you, you,” the woman said. “You are in pain. Yes, I sense such pain.”
Bark bark.
“All will be well. Yes, all will be well. You were in another life. Together. In another life. Husband and wife.” She turned her head toward Carlton but her eyes remained blank, as if she weren't really seeing him. “You were an artist. All will be well.” To me: “You lived with his parents. In a cottage in the woods. You were angry at his mother. And she never accepted you.”
Bark bark.

What the fuck? I knew not to look at Carlton because we would giggle. Hysterically. Stomach crunchingly. I just knew.

“Many lives together. You two. But lots of pain. All will be well. You killed her.”

I ventured to look at him and realized I was sitting with my legs crossed in a position that mirrored his. He didn't turn his face to mine.

“But all will be well.”

I slid the peony bangle up to my elbow and bit down hard on the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. Nerves.

She turned her head directly to me and stared with those unseeing eyes. “All will be…” She stopped. She barked again. One hand went to her throat. She kept barking as if she couldn't stop. I bit the inside of my mouth harder and avoided Carlton's eyes. Finally the psychic was silent. She blinked at me. She said, “You will eventually learn to take care of yourself. To love yourself.”

“Then will all be well?” Carlton asked. He winked at me.

The psychic shook her head. “No,” she said. “Then you'll be on the other side.”

We both burst out laughing; the tension was too much. The psychic stood up. She was out of her trance. I noticed creases in her face I hadn't seen before, and the way her makeup caked around her nostrils; she looked as if she'd aged about ten years. “We're finished now,” she said.

*   *   *

Carlton and I ended up back at the hotel. I wondered why he hadn't suggested his place, but I didn't spend too much time worrying about that. I was trying to concentrate on what it would be like to have his big cock inside me and avoiding what the psychic had said afterward.
Then you'll be on the other side
. Dead.