Josie and Jack (20 page)

At least I’m wearing a bra, I thought. “Shut up,” I said.

The bartender was wearing thick glasses and an ancient green T-shirt that said
ERIE HOSE CO.
#8 across his fleshy chest. When I finally got his attention, I tossed back my hair and told him to get me four Budweisers and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. His eyes never left my chest.

I did the shot at the bar, took the four bottles between my fingers, and made my soggy way back to the table. When Jack saw me he swore. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I got wet.” I slammed the beer bottles down.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Becka reached for one of the beers.

“I’ve seen uglier things happen in this place,” Michael said. “Seen uglier things, period.”

Jack said, “Jesus Christ, Mike.”

I half-fell back into my chair and pushed my hair out of my damp eyes. The whiskey was warm in my stomach and I knew that as soon as the beer hit my bloodstream, I’d be fine. Even when the rest of the world shook under my feet, I always had a good, solid grasp on getting drunk. “It’s hot in here anyway,” I said. “I’ll live.”

The night slipped away. My throat was telling me that I was smoking too much, and my giddy, giggly mood should have been a good indicator that I was drinking too much. I filed that information away to be examined at a later time and drank every beer that appeared in front of me. Sometimes Michael was sitting with me; sometimes it was Jack. More and more it was Jack. I found, as the evening wore on, that I had less and less to say to Michael, and he seemed to have less and less to say to me.

Eventually I was alone at the table. Jack took the chair across from me. “Thought you were dancing,” I said.

“I stopped.”

I tried to flick my cigarette into the ashtray and almost knocked over my beer, catching it around the neck just in time.

Jack watched. “You’re cute when you’re drunk,” he said. “You’ve got to be the cutest drunk I’ve ever known.” He leaned across the table and said, suddenly serious, “Josie, did Michael make a move on you today?”

I tried to fix him with a steely gaze. It was harder than it should have been. “Jack, did Becka make a move on you today?”

“No,” he said. “I made a move on her.”

“Well, then.”

“It kept her happy, didn’t it? And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s in our best interest to keep Becka happy.”

“Of course. Our best interest.”

“Better fucking believe it.” He sat back. His eyes were sullen now.

“So what if he did,” I said.

“Did he?”

“Yes.” But that wasn’t exactly true. “No. He kissed me. But I wanted him to.”

“The guy’s a freak,” he said.

“I’m a freak. Your girlfriend says so. Besides, he was nice to me. He cut a pebble out of my foot.”

Jack stared at me for another moment. Then he shook his head. “You’re drunk.”

“Dance with me,” I said. “Will you dance with me?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” My eyes were filling with tears and my T-shirt was damp and sticky and uncomfortable. “Maybe I just want to go home.”

Suddenly Becka appeared out of nowhere and collapsed into Jack’s lap. He quickly hid the disgust that crossed his face.

“Hiya, darlin’,” she said.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Dancing with Mikey, since you abandoned me.” Her mouth formed a pretty little pout that made me want to roll my eyes. “But now I wanna dance with you.”

Jack gave her a perfunctory smile. “I think I’d better take Josie home.”

“Are you coming back?”

“She’s drunk. I want to get her out of here. Make sure she’s okay.”

“I want to stay,” Becka said firmly. “I want to stay here.”

“So stay,” Jack said.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “I want you to stay
with
me.

“Becka, she’s my sister,” he said. “I’m taking her home and staying with her.”

Becka stood up, knocking over my beer. “Your sister, your fucking sister. I’m sick to death of hearing about her. You want to take her home, fine. Take her all the way home, will you?” Her eyes focused on me. “No offense, sweetie, but I didn’t sign up for this and I don’t want it. I’m not your fucking Girl Scout leader, okay?”

“All
right,
Becka.” Jack helped me to my feet. “She’s just a kid, for Christ’s sake.”

“She’s about as much a kid as I am.” Becka’s hands were on her hips and her mouth was twisted.

“Jack,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Becka made a disgusted sound. “Fine. Get her out of here. I’ll get a ride home with Michael. At least
he
likes me better than his sister.”

Jack wouldn’t talk to me on the way home, and when we got back to Becka’s he was angry and a little rough. When I woke up the next morning, thick-headed and sick, I was in Becka’s bed. Jack was sitting on the edge of it with a cup of coffee.

“Becka didn’t come back last night,” he said. He no longer seemed angry. His eyes were gentle but very grave. “Here, drink this.”

I took the cup and did my best. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have trusted him with you,” he said, although that wasn’t at all what I was apologizing for. He put his hand on my leg. “We’ll deal with her. I’ll deal with her.”

I rolled over onto my side and put my head in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Don’t be.” We heard a car pull up in front of the house. “You’d better get up.”

My clothes from the night before were on the bathroom floor. I put them on, wincing at the bar smell of cigarettes, alcohol, and sweat that saturated them, and then took my time washing my face and brushing my teeth. I was hoping that whatever was going to happen between Jack and Becka would happen while I couldn’t hear it over the running water. But as I turned it off, I heard Becka say loudly, “Don’t you blame me, don’t blame me
or
my friends if your precious innocent sister throws herself at everything with a—”

Then there was the loud sudden crack of a slap and a high female yelp of pain.

I burst out of the bathroom in time to see Becka sprawled on the floor with a pink splotch spreading on one side of her face. She leaped to her feet with a shriek of inarticulate fury and went for my brother with her nails in front of her like an irate cat. Without thinking I jumped between those bright red claws and my brother’s face and threw up my arms to stop her.

“Get out of my way!” she screamed. She grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me against the nearest wall. I fell heavily and grunted in pain. Before I knew what was happening I was covered in Becka, enraged and vicious: her nails at my eyes, her hands in my hair, her tiny sharp shoes stabbing my thighs as she kicked at me.

Then Jack was on her. I heard two more slaps in quick succession, and then he tore her away from me and held her back by her upper arms.

Becka’s nose was bleeding. “I want you out of my house,” she spat at me through the blood. “I want you out of my house
now.
This is my house.”

“Becka,” Jack said, his voice cruel and composed. “Calm down.”

She wheeled around to face him. “You too! Out! You think ’cause you’re a good fuck I’m gonna let you walk all over me? You snake! You asshole! You
hitter!”
Her face was purple with rage.

“You’re right, Becka.” Jack was still calm. “I shouldn’t have hit you. But you shouldn’t have said that about Josie.”

“Oh, I know. She’s just a kid, isn’t she? Innocent as can be, doesn’t know nothing—well, I know exactly what she knows, I know enough to know that—but
she’s
just a kid,
she’s
not a cheap twisted little whore—”

Then he hit her again, with his fist this time. She fell to her knees, holding her face, and burst into a storm of tears.

“No,” he said. “She’s my sister.”

Then he came over and helped me up. “Okay?” His voice was gentle.

I rubbed my thighs where they were beginning to bruise and nodded numbly. Becka was howling, letting loose great violent wails of frustration and pain. She sounded as if her heart was breaking. Maybe it was.

“Get your stuff.” Jack’s face was grim.

Becka jumped up and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door hard behind her.

“Get your stuff,” he said again.

Outside of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, the bus that we were riding to New York began to make sick coughing noises. When we got to the bus stop, a wretched little cubicle tucked away in a sprawling, almost deserted strip mall, the driver told us that we were going to have to wait for a replacement bus, which would come from Harrisburg. It might be a while, he said. It might be hours.

The dingy little waiting room had two rows of hard plastic chairs that faced each other in one corner. The air was chilly and stale with air conditioning. We sat down to wait. We’d only been sitting there a few minutes when Jack got up and went to the restroom.

When he came back, he dropped back into his chair. “Eleven hundred, including the three hundred Michael gave me last night.”

I knew he was talking about the fat roll of money that he’d saved while he lived with Becka. He’d gone to the bathroom to count it. “That’s not so bad,” I said.

“It is in New York,” he said. “You know what we got the most for? That charm bracelet of yours. It was
vintage,
or something.”

“You sold it?”

Jack nodded. “Hungry?”

I was too full of
mine it was mine you sold it and it was mine
to think about food. “I guess so,” I said.

“Tough luck. We are embarking on hard times, my darling. You want a candy bar out of the machine?”

Mine, I thought. It was mine. “I’ll pass,” I said, “but thanks loads.” My voice sounded normal.

“Anything for you.” He stretched out across a row of lime green chairs and rested his head on my thigh. Throwing an arm over his eyes, he didn’t say anything else for a long time.

The waiting room was air-conditioned, but the sun streaming in through the smeared plate-glass windows was hot. As the afternoon wore on, the squares of sunlight on the floor came closer and closer to where I was sitting until they were directly on top of me. Soon the backs of my thighs were sticking to the plastic. I was stiff and sore where Becka had kicked me.

I wasn’t sure if Jack was really asleep or pretending, so I tried to keep still. I started to count flecks. There were flecks everywhere I looked. Blue flecks in the green chairs. Yellow flecks in the orange chairs. Gray flecks in the white linoleum. The windows were streaked and spotted with brownish grime. A man in uniform came in and talked to the woman behind the counter for a long time. I listened to the way that they flattened and twisted their words out of shape, and I tried to ignore my legs.

Eventually I couldn’t sit still anymore. My legs were aching and buzzing for motion and I needed to move. I shook Jack’s shoulder until he woke up.

Irritated, he wouldn’t answer any of my questions about New York—where we were going to stay, or how long we were going to live there. I told him that his personality was improved by unconsciousness and he said, “Next time don’t fucking wake me up then.”

I quit talking to him. He stared straight ahead, out the plate-glass windows. There was a vaguely disgusted look on his face. I’d never felt so lonely.

7

M
ANY HOURS LATER
I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a half-naked, too thin girl with incredibly dirty hair that might have been blond a long time ago, when it was clean.

Ah, I thought, only a little surprised by my lack of surprise. Mirrors on the ceiling. Trust my brother.

I had only faint memories of the night before, of climbing off the bus and walking for what seemed like miles along brightly lit streets until we came to a dimly lit stairway. I remembered standing behind a man in a silver shirt and a woman whose high black boots shone as brightly as her sequined dress, and I remembered telling Jack, as we followed a soiled carpet down the hall to our room, that they must have been to a costume party that night. He told me that I had a lot to learn; I told him I’d learn it tomorrow; then I used the bathroom, took off the clothes I’d been wearing for the past thirty hours, and went to sleep.

We were in New York City, in a hotel room. The shower was running.

I sat up in bed and examined my surroundings. The shade on the room’s one window was pulled all the way up, but the light in the room was dim and pale. I could barely make out the only other piece of furniture in the room, a combination TV/VCR standing on a metal cabinet. There wasn’t room for anything else. There was barely room to walk around the edges of the bed.

The shower stopped running and Jack came into the room, wrapped in a towel so small that he might as well have skipped it. “Like the room?”

“Great.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. Of course he did; there was nowhere else to sit. “Don’t panic. It’s not permanent.”

“Great,” I said again. “What’s the permanent solution?”

“We look for a place. Like we’ve always talked about doing.”

“Then what?”

“Then we hope we find one before our money runs out. This place only looks cheap.”

“When we find a place. Then what?”

“Christ, Josie, don’t nag,” he said. So I knew that there was no “then what.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” I said.

Jack was propped up against the wall, with his legs sprawling and the towel cast casually across his lap. He picked up the remote control and said nothing.

There was an impressive collection of small plastic bottles lined up on the side of the bathtub. Although there were several brightly colored bottles of massage oil and lubricant to choose from, there was no shampoo, so I washed my hair with bubble bath, which didn’t work very well but was better than nothing. My wet hair smelled like the lake, which made me think of Michael. When I walked back into the bedroom, Jack had the TV on and was watching languidly while three grainy women standing by a grainy swimming pool peeled their clothes off. “Look at that pool,” he said as I wrapped myself in the towel and sat down on the edge of the bed. “We should have gone to Los Angeles.”