Further Out Than You Thought (25 page)

Why was she such a snob? The kids today flocking to the windows of her car had called her a rich American. It was true. When had she ever gone hungry, other than intentionally? When had she wanted, really, for anything money could provide?

Fifi jumped on the bed and curled up beside her. The bed was comfortable, and finally being alone she relaxed, felt the hard exterior that held her together soften. She had a room to herself.

She slipped her bra off under her T-shirt. Her breasts were sore and she held them, lifting their weight. They were like sponges heavy with water and they filled her hands. She wanted to feel the child inside her, to feel like a mother—what being a mother would be like—a baby on her breast, in her arms. But what she felt, instead, was an ache, a need.

She moved her fingertips over her nipples. She could feel the heat starting up inside her, the sticky dampness between her thighs. The feeling took her by surprise. When she'd first started stripping she'd often made herself come, thinking of the club and what had happened there, but over time the excitement had waned. The club had become routine, and she'd grown exhausted. She felt different now. New. She unbuttoned her jeans, put a finger inside her, pressed it deeper and then brought it to her lips. It was an umami taste, like coffee—dark, unsweetened, freshly brewed coffee. Would Brett taste the same as she did? she wondered. Her own taste had changed, though. There was the wetness, constant, her own secret spring. And her taste was stronger, sweeter, as if, while she was busy being a person—busy walking, breathing, trying to figure out this life that was no longer her own—she was also marinating, steeping herself in herself. Like tree-ripened fruit. Dark orange papaya flesh.

Or maybe kiwi. Her hair had grown and was prickly. But the hair on her labia was more like velvet, the fuzz of a fresh peach. It was soft. She spread herself, moved her middle finger up and down, as though she were rolling a coin. It sent ripples through her, just the edges of ripples, the barest shimmers of light.

She could almost go there. Slip into that river and let its slow, sweet current take her. Sometimes she could and it was easy, that slipping toward ecstasy—stepping outside herself, becoming vast. Like the times she'd been with women, before Leo, when the pleasure had been pure and acute, excruciating.

But there were times she needed something more, something else, for balance. For depth. Sometimes she needed, like Love, a little pain. She wished she'd brought the toys that would fill her, this way and that, those devices that would cause her to submit, to let go, the miniature rocket ships that would open every gateway and send her with such speed, such urgency, into outer space. She'd have to make do without. She pulled her jeans down to her thighs and spanked herself, like Brett did when she danced. Her cheeks burned. On her back, she was her own puppet. She slipped a finger into the silky, lush interior, used two to part the curtains—those lethargic sister folds—as her middle finger danced center stage, a ballerina on point, making those quick, tiny circles in place.

She thought of
Story of O
—
O
for orgasm,
O
for open,
O
for the circles of lilac light pulsing on the black screen of her closed eyelids, her own private movie house. She thought of O and Sir Stephen, thought of him taking her in front of his secretary, taking her behind from behind. O—so obedient. Her tits out and ready, ready to be seen and touched. Her ass upturned, waiting. One finger, two. All she wanted was to be good.

She shuddered and the world was the
O,
the white space the
O
enclosed.
O
for the oxytocin flooding her brain, fueling these contractions of light.
O
for the orifice that expands to contract to expand—for the birth canal, for the child's head crowning.
O
for the Ouroboros encircling the universe,
O
for the ode to the orgasm, the mode of travel to where—beyond name and place, beyond her hopes and her fears, beyond herself—Gwen was the whole world and she was made just of love. She was drifting in it, in herself. She was the sea, and the small boat, and the girl curled inside it.

From far off, she heard rumbling, a little volcano, Fifi snoring beside her.

SHE WOKE TO pounding on the door, accompanied by Fifi's piercing bark. The sound yanked her from her dreams, where there had been whales, where one had surfaced, saying,
Hang on, sweetheart,
and had given her a ride to shore.

How long had she slept? What day was it?

She felt drugged. Sleep and dreams had come over her with a vengeance. She woke to the dark room and, in the hall, the sound of retching. She zipped up her jeans and opened the door. The hall was dim and her eyes were bleary, but she could see Valiant heaving margaritas and the remains of what must have been the huevos rancheros into one of the blue plastic garbage cans. The smell came over her in a single, pressing wave of nausea. She plugged her nose.

“It's okay, it's okay. There you go,” Leo said, holding his shoulders. He looked at Gwen. His eyes were red. Already the night had been long.

She picked up Fifi and calmed her down as Leo searched Valiant's pockets for the key to his room. He unlocked the door and Valiant stumbled in and collapsed onto the bed. He was holding a half-empty bottle of tequila and it hit the wall but didn't break.

Gwen stood in the open doorway and watched the caregiver in Leo take over. His mother was a nurse, and he had, Gwen had always figured, inherited her way of making a person feel at ease, safe and loved. Tugging at the bedspread and the sheet, with as kind a touch as possible, he rolled Valiant over and tucked him in. He wet a washcloth, wrung it out, and wiped the Count's face, the corners of his mouth. The Count slapped away Leo's hand and mumbled something.

“What did he say?” she said to Leo.

Valiant shouted the answer to the peeling walls. “When did I become such a monster?” And she heard his question ricochet down the hotel's brick hallway.

He flung off the covers, twisted his body down the bed—legs crossed, arms outstretched. He sang sweetly, his voice breaking with each high note. They hung back, by the wall, giving him room.

Gwen recognized the song from
Guys and Dolls,
but his voice faltered midflight, like a hurt bird in too swift a wind, and it lent the lyrics a strain, unexpected and tragic.

He stopped singing. “I should have been the next Sinatra,” he said to the ceiling. And then he yelled, “Luck's a fucking cunt!”

“Shut up!” she heard someone yell back.

Valiant lay sprawled and still. He turned just his head toward Gwen and Leo and squinted his eyes as if to focus. Discovering them there, he brightened. “My friends,” he said, the words seeming to take what energy he had left. “I can't keep this up.”

He curled into a ball, clutching his bottle of tequila to his heart. The Virgin gazed down at him from her pedestal of a bedside table. His eyes shut and he let out a snore. Gwen flicked the light switch off, but they remained in the doorway, comforted by the rhythm of his snores. And then Leo closed the door with a small click behind them. Like parents tucking in a child, she thought.

In their room, Gwen laced up her combat boots. The weight of their steel toes connected her to the ground and made her feel solid. Under her shirt, she slipped on her bra and fastened it. She didn't want to be naked in front of Leo, not right now, nor did she want to be braless. She wanted reinforcement, protection. And she had to get out of this room.

“Where are you going?” he said. “It's late.”

“How late?”

“I don't know. After ten.”

“I need a razor. I work tomorrow night.”

“Oh,” he said, his voice flat. “Why didn't you buy one today?”

“I keep forgetting.”

He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her. The bed sagged like the back of an old, skinny horse he was riding sidesaddle. Not that he was going anywhere. The moment was frozen. It was a depiction of a moment, set in itself. Facing the window with the faded, rose-patterned curtains drawn across it, he was like a man in a Hopper painting, which she figured put her in the painting, too—so long as she was still, looking at his back, saying nothing. When she moved, when she walked to the bathroom and peed, came back in the room, drank water from the plastic bottle and found her purse as he sat there, eyes open, face to the wall, she became the observer, no longer a subject of concern.

How easy it was, she realized, to take oneself out of the picture.

She turned the handle of the door.

“I'm coming with you,” he said, in a voice that was so dispassionate, she expected him not to move. But he stood, hooked the leash to Fifi's collar, and followed Gwen out the door.

THE STREETLAMP IN front of the hotel still flickered, all the more strobe-like for the darkness. Fifi pulled Leo forward, tugging on the leash, from smell to glorious smell. And when she stuck to any one spot, he tugged her along. Gwen found herself walking ahead.

The Bar Del Prado had its doors open, and the chatter and fierce, garish laughter smelled of cigarettes and booze as it spilled onto the sidewalk.

She was annoyed and she didn't know why. She walked faster, as if to leave the feeling behind. She didn't want him with her, but she didn't want to be alone, either. She didn't want to be out on the street, but she didn't want to be with him in the ugly, small room. Why, exactly, had she gone along with Valiant's whim to come here? This might beat riots and a curfew, but why hadn't they gone north? They might have driven up to Santa Barbara, or all the way to Santa Cruz, where they could have stayed with her aunt.

Leo was a few doors behind her, but she didn't slow down for him, and he didn't move any faster. The longer they walked, the more glaring the silent distance between them became. They should be talking, coming together, figuring things out. She was tired, she told herself. They could discuss things in the morning.

She passed another bar. A man was leaning in the doorway, his smile lurid. “Hey, pretty lady,” he slurred, and she strode back to Leo and took his arm. They turned onto a street where the shops were closed, the street lit just by the moon. The gibbous moon, with the face you could see if you looked closely. But she wasn't gazing at the moon. The street was empty and too quiet. There was just the
click-click-click
of Fifi's toenails on the sidewalk, and Gwen had that tingly green feeling in her stomach that meant they shouldn't be there—on this street at this moment.

“The pharmacy,” she said. “Didn't you see one near the hotel?”

“I saw one this way.”

“When?”

“When we drove in. Don't you remember?”

She couldn't say she did.

On the sidewalk, a man was walking toward them, his gait somehow purposeful. He was slight, wore a baseball cap. She had an urge to turn and run. To get off the sidewalk, out of his way. She grabbed Leo's hand and squeezed it, and as if he were one of those stuffed animals with a squeeze-activated voice box he started whistling,
Would you like to swing on a star
.

Really?
she thought.
Now?

The man was a storefront away, under a frayed awning, when a shadow dashed from behind them and grabbed him. The two men were struggling and yelling. She heard the word
“chingate.”

Sticking her steel toes to the pavement, she pulled Leo back up the sidewalk, away from them. “Come on,” she said.

Instead of turning with her and walking away, he shook off her hand and dropped Fifi's leash and ran toward the men. He was insane. She knew this and still he never failed to surprise her.

Or maybe she was the insane one.

“Leo!” she called. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

He was between the men already, giving them both a shove. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. They were back at each other, the two men, and Leo was in the middle of the struggle. Something in one of their hands caught the light. A switchblade? Two? Their stances said as much. Was this personal? Some kind of duel? Or maybe a drug deal gone bad? But wouldn't they use guns for that sort of thing?

She couldn't see any knife now; it was dark and they were yelling at each other in Spanish, too fast for her to make it out. She could hear Leo.
“Hombres, por favor. Parada, parada. Por favor.”
She watched as he gave them another shove apart.

Fifi was at their heels, barking and growling. She snapped at the heel of one of the men and he kicked her. She rolled down the sidewalk and into the gutter and came right back at him. Gwen saw the flash again, the blade. She felt dizzy. Leo was grabbing the man's wrist. She heard a clink and saw a knife skid across the pavement.

Fear had her frozen a few yards from the fight. Another skirmish, close-up and personal. Was Mercury in retrograde? Or would it be Mars? Or Venus. Sometimes her brain amazed her, how it would try to run when her body couldn't. She was alone, pregnant, on a sidewalk in Tijuana, her pocket full of cash, while her boyfriend grappled with strangers. To save them from each other. Like Romeo between Mercutio and Tybalt, Leo was an annoyance. She wanted to punch him herself and drag him back to the hotel. Or let him lie on the sidewalk at the mercy of these strangers he so loved, so cared for that he'd left her side for them.

She was frozen and then she wasn't; she ducked in, toward the men, and grabbed Fifi's leash and yanked her off the man's leg. She saw the knife, within her grasp. Did she dare? She took it and ran, ran as if she wouldn't stop. Back toward the bars, where it was safe. Behind her, through the thin night air, she heard someone cry out, as if in pain, but she was running full tilt. She was saving herself and she wasn't going to stop, not even for Leo.