Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) (12 page)

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Okay,” she said and sighed, “when you get on an airplane, after you strap yourself in, but before the stewardesses start with the emergency safety bullshit, you are to look at whomever you are sitting around and announce, proudly, that you are listening to
Tuesday’s Gone
by Lynyrd Skynyrd
.
Then, you are to listen to it as the plane ascends and until you are at flying altitude. And on your descent, same thing. You listen to
Tuesday’s Gone
until your plane lands and is stopped at the gate. Understand?”

“The lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd was killed in a plane crash, India.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And you do this?”

“Every fucking flight.”

“But why?”

“Because, fuck it. That’s why,” she said.

I looked at my ceiling and smiled for the first time in weeks.

“That is brilliant,” I said.

“Good,” India said and giggled. “So you’ll do it? Promise?”

“Yes!”

“Excellent. I’m glad you like it, you’re welcome and I’ll talk to you when you call to tell me you’re coming.”

“But--”

“Goodbye, Beth,” she said and hung up.

I reached for my laptop and then pushed it down my bed with my foot. I put the headphones in, hit the repeat button on the iPod and listened to
Cut Dead
by Jesus and Mary Chain until I fell asleep.

A few days nights later I stared at my laptop and considered pawning it for a plane ticket to see India and my phone rang.

“Hey, Bethy, what are you doing?” Stephanie said.

“Bethy
? Nothing, well, thinking about pawning my laptop for a plane ticket. I really, really want to see India in Montauk.”

“Oh, well, hey...” she said.

“Okay, Bethy and three one-syllable words in a row? What’s up?”

“Nothing...really. So, hey, what’s Billy’s middle name?”

“Billy Rider? Richard. Why?”

“Richard, like Dick?” she said.

“Uh, I suppose. Fitting, huh?” I said and chuckled. “Billy Dick Rider. Perfect. Did I tell you Nicolas emailed? Yeah, said he was going surfing. Went on and on about the fucking waves...three paragraphs. Never said one thing about missing me or anything. India says I should dump him, throw the Camus quote in his face since he’s disappearing, but--”

“Hey, Beth?”

“I’m sorry, I’ll stop talking about him.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said and sighed. “Look, I have something to tell you and I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Steph, when someone tells me not to freak out, you can rest assured that I
will
freak out. What’s that moaning I hear?”

“It’s...you, Beth. I think.”

“What?”

“Okay,” she said and took a deep breath, “I’m just gonna come out with it. But I want to say, we will handle this, Beth. Just like we handle all the shitty things that are thrown at us. It’s not the end of the wor--”

“Spit it out, Stephanie,” I said and rubbed my forehead.

“Angela Jessup called me a bit ago and asked me what Billy’s middle name was. Seems she and that Hank Paulson, well, they’re going together and they enjoy porn.”

“Porn?”

“Yeah, you know, the porno movies?”

“I know what fucking porn is, Stephanie! What does this have to do with me?”

“Oh, Lord, Beth. Angela and Hank saw you in a porno video.”

“Uh, no they didn’t. You know how I know that, Steph? Because I was never in a porn video.”

“Um, maybe not willingly, Beth. I saw it, see it. It’s on the Internet,” she said and sighed.

“What the fuck?” I said and opened my laptop. “Address! Address!”

“Well, okay. Are you sure, Beth? I mean I didn’t really know it was you. There are lots of comments, all good, so, what I’m saying is, well, there is a bright side.”

“Give me the fucking address to the site, Stephanie!”

“Alright, it’s www.smutzoo.com.”

“Did you say
smutzoo.com
?”

“Yeah, I’m real sorry, Beth.”

“I’m typing it. Oh, wow. Well, there are a lot of, uh, videos here, Stephanie,” I said as I scanned Smut Zoo’s Home page.

“Yeah, you’ll want to go to the search box for the video. There’s a title that you can type in to find your video. It’s a really popular site, they have a lot of big name porn videos, too. They get lots of traffic.”

“Oh, that’s great. Thank you for clueing me in to their analytics. Could you please give me the title?”

“Sure. Type in,
My Ex-Girlfriend’s Barely Legal Princess Pussy
.”

I looked at the search box and shook my head.

“You did not just say that.”

“I did, Beth. It’s under the amateur stuff. That’s how Angela and Hank found you, it. They like the amateur porn.”

“I can’t breathe, Stephanie,” I said as I typed
My Ex-Girlfriend’s Barely Legal Princess Pussy
in the search box.

“Wait, Beth! Don’t hit enter. I’ll come over. I will just be--”

“Holy shit!”

“Too late,” Stephanie said.

I looked at the video page and saw a still shot of me and Billy sitting on his bed.

“Big Dick Rider
?” I said as I looked at the video’s submitter. “He posted this the day before he broke up with me!”

“Oh, Beth. Don’t watch it,” Stephanie said.

“Too late,” I said after I pushed play. “Oh my God, Stephanie!”

The video was thirty minutes long and it was a recording of the last time we had sex.

Billy edited the video so my ass-shaking was at the start of the movie. He then moved on to kissing and then the full-on sex. My hands shook and there was a lump in my throat the size of the “boulder of hurt” I excavated from my womb the day he dumped me.

I watched the entire video and then read the comments as Stephanie begged me not to.

“Maybe no one will ever see this and know it’s you, Beth,” Stephanie said.

“You, Hank Paulson and Angela Jessup know it’s me. Big Dick Rider knows it’s me! How long will it be before everyone knows it’s me?”

“But, did you read the comments? They had some really complimentary things to say about you, Beth. I mean, over one hundred comments and they’re all really positive.”

“Stephanie?”

“Yes, Beth?”

“I am in a porno video entitled,
My Ex-Girlfriend’s Barely Legal Princess Pussy
, in the amateur category on smutzoo.com that Billy Rider made without my knowledge. I wouldn’t care if the Sultan of Brunei commented that he wants to give me ten grand for my performance. There is
nothing
fucking positive about this! ”

“I was gonna ask you if you knew about it, I figured you didn’t know, but I wasn’t sure.”

“If I was going to do a porn video, Stephanie, I would have choreographed it better. Motherfucker! Stephanie! How could he do this to me?”

“He is, without a doubt, the lowest form of life on this planet, Beth.”

“They have to take it down, don’t they? They can’t keep it up if I tell them to take it down,” I said.

“I was looking into that. I’ve not found the answer yet. It’s visitor-generated content, Beth. It’s not like smutzoo.com posted it. They’re kind of like the hosts.”

“I’ve gotta go, Steph.”

“Beth, what are you going to do?”

“Throw up and then I don’t know.”

“Let me come over.”

“I have to...I’ll call you later.”

I slammed the cover to my laptop shut and ran out into the living room. I walked down the hall toward Ivory-Lou and Rebel Love’s bedroom and I saw the light shining out from under Ivory-Lou’s office.

I wiped my tears and knocked on the big, wooden door.

“I’m working!” he said.

“Um, it’s me...Beth.”

I heard him grumbling as he moved his chair. His slippers slapped against the wooden floor and he pulled the door open.

“Oh, hello, Beth, long time, no see. I was just wondering what in the world you could be up to since I haven’t seen you in a whole...hour. What do you want?”

“I really need to talk to you. It’s important. And not like, I’m in love with a guy and he looked at me weird, can you tell me what it means, important, but
really
important.”

“You pregnant?” he said and stared down at me.

“No. Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” he said and shook his head as he walked back in his office.

I closed the door and followed him to his big mahogany desk. He sat down in his leather chair behind his desk and I sat on the other side of the desk in a leather club chair.

“These are nice chairs. Are these the chairs Rebel Love picked up at that furniture store on Hester Street?”

“What do you want, Beth? I’m busy. End of quarter, paper work, you know, business. Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know.”

“Funny,” I said and smiled.

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He pulled a cigar out of a big crystal ashtray and lit it. He blew the smoke at the ceiling and stared at his computer monitor.

“This is...difficult. Stephanie called me and--” I said.

“Is she pregnant?”

“No. No one is pregnant, thank God. Well, Billy Rider’s girlfriend is, which brings me to what I need to talk to you about. Just please bear with me because I’m freaking the fuck out.”

“You seem pretty calm. A lot calmer than you’ve been the past weeks.”

“Yeah,” I said and took a deep breath, “I think I’m in shock.”

He looked at me and moved his chair closer to his desk.

“What’s up?”

“I’m just gonna blurt because I don’t know any other way. Um, Billy Rider posted a video of us having sex on the Internet to a site called smutzoo.com. He posted under the name Big Dick Rider. I did not give him my permission and did not know he was filming us having sex. The camera was hidden in his room, from the angle, I think on one of the shelves above his dresser. The video is called:
My Ex-Girlfriend’s Barely Legal Princess Pussy
. He posted it the day before Thanksgiving. It was the last time we had sex and the day before he broke up with me. The video has been viewed over one thousand times since he posted it. So far, I know of only three people who know about it...Angela Jessup and Hank Paulson, they discovered it, Stephanie and Billy Rider. Four people, well, five, me. It has a rating of five out of five stars.”

I looked at him and tears ran down my face. He dropped his cigar in his ashtray and put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

“Please, help me,” I said. “I am humiliated. I don’t know what to do.”

“I need to see it,” he said and grabbed his wireless keyboard.

“No! I just told you I’m humiliated.”

He looked up at me and cocked his head.

“Beth, believe me, I’m not looking at for the excitement value. Now, you trusted me enough to tell me about it, right? Trust me enough to take care of it.”

I exhaled and gave him the address to the website and told him what to type in the search box.

I covered my eyes and peeked at him through my fingers. He sat stone-faced as he watched the video and did not move until it was done. He picked his cigar up and puffed on it as he stared at me.

“So, I asked Stephanie if I could make them take it down and she said she didn’t have that information. Um, would you know something about that?” I said and stared at his desk.

“I know something about that,” he said and took a pad of paper out of his credenza and threw it on the desk.

I looked up at him and burst into tears.

“I know I’m a disappointment,” I said. “Please don’t tell my mother. She expects it of me.”

He grabbed a box of tissues and reached across his desk.

“Wipe your face, Beth.”

“How much more?” I said as I sobbed.

“Can you take?” he said.

I nodded and held onto the box of tissues.

“As much as you want to,” he said. “Finish crying. Wipe your face.”

He stared at me while I sat in the chair shaking. When I had nothing left in me, I blew my nose and slumped back in the chair.

“Are you done?” he said.

“Yes, I’m done.”

He stared at the computer screen and licked his lips.

“This Billy you went out with,
Big Dick Rider
, same one who’s been in my house?” he said as he rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said and blew my nose.